The Incredible String Band

Try asking a certain Robert Plant what he thinks of the Incredible String Band. You'll be opening the proverbial Pandora's box. Instead of the world's evils, though, you'll be plunged into an amalgam of love, passion, devotion, declarations of esteem and much more, to the point that the Led Zeppelin frontman himself has stated that the direction chosen for his band's first album owes much to the peculiar expressive formula developed by the Scottish band. If Plant's endorsement is the most prominent external tribute to the memory of this legendary folk outfit, the magic that the group was able to conjure has reverberated through the work of countless artists and bands, who have kept alive the flame of a purest inspiration, one capable of transcending its original context to imagine new worlds, extraordinary stories, unthinkable combinations.

The most celebrated fruit of an artistic partnership that revolutionized the parameters of Anglo-Saxon folk, "The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter" is a majestic work, a monument to imagination, to the union of East and West, to tradition seen not as a museum piece to be protected from outside interference, but as living, pulsating matter, to be updated and transformed as needed. A crucible of miracles, after which nothing was ever the same again. And probably not even its creators had a clear idea of what that cauldron would produce.

They certainly didn't have it clear in 1965, when Robin Williamson and Clive Palmer, after years of paying their dues on the Edinburgh folk club circuit, decided to recruit a third member to the cause, to round out a sound that had started out echoing the stylistic tics of American bluegrass and Scottish folk. It's a fruitful experience, one that allows the duo to cross paths with figures who would later become legendary (Archie Fischer and Bert Jansch among them), but one that soon shows its limits, both in strictly sonic terms and in geographic terms, confined as it was within the boundaries of the Scottish city. The arrival of Mike Heron (already involved in several bands of wildly varied stylistic profile) completely reshuffles the deck; initially hired as a mere rhythm accompanist, he would prove essential to the group's fortunes, to the point of entirely redirecting its course and attitude, but also its very balance.

It's a short-lived menage-à-trois, just long enough for the trio, having in the meantime relocated to Glasgow, to be noticed by Joe Boyd (who had settled in the UK to coordinate the opening and operations of Elektra Records' British office) and land the long-awaited record deal that would finally turn their fortunes around. Christening themselves the Incredible String Band (likely inspired by the name of the venue Clive Palmer ran for a few months, "Clive's Incredible Folk Club"), the trio present the producer with a demo that, alongside the usual reworkings of standards from both sides of the Atlantic, also includes a handful of original songs. Enough to leave Boyd impressed and to speed up the making of a proper record.

"The Incredible String Band" came out in 1966 and finds the trio moving almost entirely away from reworkings of traditional songs, offering material that is nearly all self-penned. Simpler and more spontaneous than what would follow, the music on the debut album nonetheless sees the trio staking a claim with character and grit in the folk revival debate then raging in the UK, highlighting the earthy energy of their performances and their excellent instrumental chops, which are shared between three-part pieces, duets and solo moments. Above all, it makes clear from the outset the almost exclusive split of the creative process between newcomer Heron and Williamson, with Palmer writing only one song and co-arranging another.

It's an undeniably tense situation, however creatively charged, one destined to resolve itself in very short order. The trio would in fact break up shortly after, with Palmer following the hippie trail to Afghanistan and Williamson heading to Morocco, keen to delve into the region's rich cultural heritage. Heron would be the only one to stay behind, lending his talent to other local bands. It's a brief pause for thought, since his old partner, back from Africa (broke but equipped with an array of local instruments, in pure ethnomusicological style) decides to pick up the conversation that had been interrupted a few months earlier and get the incredible signature sound of British folk back on the road.

What has by now become a proper duo (and one that would remain the group's hard core for years to come) steps into the overcrowded year of 1967 armed with thoroughly singular experiences (spiritual retreats across Asia and Africa would soon kick off in earnest) and a rare wealth of eclectic knowledge. A mix of talents that Boyd wastes no time putting to use, speeding up the recording of the second album: bearing a title both evocative and grandiose, "The 5000 Spirits Or The Layers Of The Onion" sees the Incredible String Band striding forward toward the definition of a wholly personal style, tightly bound to Anglo-Saxon folk tradition yet broadly reaching toward other horizons, willing to let the imagination run free. A reflection of the new awareness the two musicians had gained (Heron himself, in Williamson's absence, had begun delving into the sitar), the duo's new record, made after their move to London, is a work that leaps over the fences of the folk song, finding a new dynamism, a wholly unprecedented sparkle, mirroring the psychedelic season then in full bloom.

Boasting a lineup of collaborators that included, among others, Danny Thompson of Pentangle on double bass, Nazir Jairazbhoy on sitar (a native player of the instrument whose presence already placed the ISB's exploration well beyond the contemporary experiments of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones) and Williamson's girlfriend, Christina "Licorice" McKechnie, on vocals, the record is a sharp and curious work, extraordinarily varied in instrumentation (mandolin and gimbri among the instruments used) and marked by a lively, surprising melodicism that doesn't hesitate to shift shape within the span of a few minutes ("The Mad Hatter's Song") or to take hypothetical trips around the world within the band's freewheeling compositional format.

With genre instant-classics such as "First Girl I Loved" (repeatedly used as the pretext for cover versions) and "The Hedgehog's Song", the album allows the Incredible String Band to break out of their niche and reach a considerably wider audience (peaking at number 25 on the UK chart), winning over critics and radio alike, including the show run by a certain John Peel, who would waste no time spreading their music through his channels. Paul McCartney himself would have more than kind words to spend on the record, calling it his favourite album of 1967. Everything, in short, was perfectly set for the Incredible String Band to make the great leap and firmly enter the public imagination. The two certainly had no intention of being caught off guard…

And caught off guard they would not be at all. Much like the leap forward made between the first and second albums, on the way to their third full-length the British duo, now joined by their respective partners (the already-mentioned Licorice McKechnie and Rose Simpson, as vocalists and instrumentalists), take a further quantum leap, not only in terms of greater production savvy, but also and above all in the scope of their lyrical content, in the elevation of a songwriting never so rich and accomplished. Recorded at the close of 1967 and released in March of the following year, "The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter" is the crowning achievement of two years of exploration and new approaches, the actual attainment of a personal signature, one capable of holding its own against the most pressing contemporary trends while at the same time detaching itself from them, by virtue of an aura that carries the songs into a space outside of time.

If the iconic photo on the back of the vinyl, showing the band's four members, friends and friends' children got up like an eccentric gang of medieval cutpurses, is telling of anything, it's that this timelessness was pursued with great deliberation. The image is so striking that editions outside the UK used it as the official cover, replacing the original, which consisted of a photo of Heron and Williamson set against an intense blue sky. Since 1976 the British reissues themselves have swapped the two around.

With Williamson and Heron once again splitting the creative side sharply between them (while still serving the making of a unified project), the record centres on building an architecture that gives full room to the two musicians' substantial store of ethnographic knowledge, in light of the era's production innovations and the languages of British tradition, here turned inside out with an unprecedented sense of freedom. So where the previous records amplified the potential inherent in a mode of communication still tied to expressive parameters consolidated over centuries, on "The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter" the approach starts from the opposite direction, injecting doses of Anglo-Saxon folklore into a densely populated stage that shifts as much toward the straightforwardness of pop melody as toward freer forms, often bordering on progressive suites. It's a display of grandeur and creative power, capable of picking up on the era's production and recording innovations (multi-track techniques above all) and bending them to its own designs, exalting the full complexity of a project that intersects cultures, attitudes and states of perception in a fairy-tale-like, bizarre mix that is anything but ordinary.

"Koeeoaddi There" kicks things off, and it's immediately clear how the name the band chose for itself doesn't betray expectations in the slightest: in a continuous succession of melodic sections that are always different from one another, where guitars, concertinas, sitar, mbira and jew's harp mark out precise moments of the track, a genuine spell unfolds in which the fire of childhood, the sacredness of natural elements and wordplay follow one another with no internal logic, with the frayed coherence of a dream. And as in dreams, the stylistic palette expands boundlessly, skilfully evoking the swaying gait of Arabic composition, the earthy force of country, the hymn-like charge of British folk, summoned here with genuine choral fervour.

"The Minotaur's Song" amplifies this aspect further, in a call-and-response game that drags the effervescent, pre-war variety-style progression into a sparkling parody that flips the narrative usually associated with the mythical son of Pasiphaë, making him the protagonist of his own story. If the lyrical outline is already unsettling, the delivery is no less so, with Williamson laying it on with effective theatricality, hammering every word to the point of parody. A retelling of a myth that celebrates the versatility and the thoroughly British humour of a band unafraid to draw from the most classic of sources and offer up its own version, hallucinated and amused.

And while one might think the shorter moments are mere interludes meant to link the more structured pieces in the collection, listening reveals that the duo's songwriting can still be concise and skilful without sacrificing courage or exploration. "Witches Hat" is another lucid dream, a juxtaposition of fairy-tale-like, arcane images, in which the structure's progression nonetheless shuns the circularity of British folk composition, packing three key changes and a playful instrumental coda, thick with flute and guitar jokes, into just two and a half minutes. "Mercy I Cry City" (one of Heron's three compositions here) is pure pop emphasis, marked by the collection's most explosive and lucid refrain, set however within a spirited, irrepressible arrangement, a country dance of urban satyrs and seductive nymphs, a cry against a downfall that seems to know no rest.

"The Water Song" is a soothing, suspended invocation, a lullaby dedicated to the most elusive of the four elements (with Judy Collins on pipe organ underscoring its sacred quality), yet one that still makes room for a dry, atonal interlude, merging placid streams of water with the hot winds of the Sahara. "Nightfall" is the throbbing conclusion to an unforgettable work, the long-awaited surrender of the senses translated into a light, polished ballad steeped in intense Eastern scents, through which memory itself becomes intoxicated.

It's with "A Very Cellular Song", however, that the Incredible String Band's ambitions find full expression, developing an entire musical theory over thirteen minutes, framed within a narrative that starts literally from cells (more precisely, from amoebas) and builds a meditation on love and life, surrounded by mystical chants, spirit-summoning rites and funeral music, with a gift for synthesis that many a prog band would envy. Born of a trip, as psychedelic custom dictates, Heron's inspiration breaks through every barrier, managing to make otherwise unthinkable contexts coexist, tracing a thematic thread that moves beyond the bounds of reason, attempting to conjure an impossible universality. This is how the progression, held together by deft harpsichord commentary and unexpected interjections of jaw harps and Jew's harps, manages to weave into its flow funeral chants from Bahamian tradition ("I Bid You Goodnight", a spiritual originally performed by the Pinder Family, here pushed to extremes in its repetitive character), melodic passages that erase the temporal distance between the Renaissance and the folk revival, dazed odes to cellular mitosis, and finally a blessing brimming with hope, capable of bringing the senses to rest. The fact that this final section has been mistaken for a Sikh hymn or an Irish song, when in reality it's an original piece written by Heron himself, speaks volumes about the duo's skill in reworking influences and material from the most disparate corners of the world, adapting them into an entirely new, overflowingly personal language.

Tortuous but never harsh, theatrical and at the same time fable-like, the world packed into the ten tracks of "The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter" (don't even try to ask for the meaning of the title, Heron and Williamson themselves have implied that every interpretation is the right one) reveals the strength of a boundless imagination, the power of a music proudly and knowingly far removed from any rock idiom, yet one that would paradoxically go on to inspire hordes of like-minded foundlings of the most oblique songwriting (from New Weird America onward), carving out its own place in legend.

Buoyed by strong success (reaching number 5 on the British album charts), the album would mark the commercial and artistic peak of the Incredible String Band, who closed out their golden year with a double album, "Wee Tam & The Big Huge" (inexplicably split in two for US distribution), even bolder and more daring in its production choices. Then came the appearance at Woodstock, the embrace of Scientology, forays into theatre and much more, cementing one of the most solid cults in British folk. Yet the fragments of magic scattered throughout the hangman's beautiful daughter remain hopelessly unmatched.

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17/11/2019