Drag City
Gary Higgins : Red Hash (US,1973)***°°
After the first listen of the Gary Higgins unofficial reissue I found in a small record store once, I paid most attention to the most beautifully arranged songs. After each listen the record grew on me closer and there were a few songs which even came very close to my soul and heart, especially “Windy Child”, with its beautiful transcendent text. But most other songs like for instance “I can’t sleep at night” or “Cuckoo”, “I pick notes from the sky” and “Telegraph Towers”, have the same special and unique and personal sphere which makes this album so warm with an everlasting energy beyond the blues of things with a transcendent strength in energy, which grows on you with each listen, in the way that people are getting to know one another better when and while participating in deeper spheres, with a creative openness etc... getting deeper into the essential soul of things. A couple songs were more like funny and hippie-cynical like “Down on the farm” (“When I was down on the farm I was in no harm till they seen the muscles on my arm..”), also here with the same musical background spherical mood somehow still intact.
The album was originally released on Nufusmoon Label. It found two unofficial reissues, but now finally it is remastered. It had a lot of attention, where I guess people begin to realise there's more than one psychedelic folk record around, and of the importance of the genre.
Garry Higgins, vocals, had help from guitarist Jake Bell (later of Silver Apples), pianist Terry Fenton, mandolin player and flautist Paul Tierney, cellist Maureen Wells and bassist Dave Beaujon. The accompaniment of cello, keyboards, and so on, is really wonderful. Not only the songs but also the arrangements make this one the most deep-soulful psychfolk records I know of.
-Bonus tracks include "Don't Ya Know," an early 80's home recording, and "Last Great Sperm Whale," a 1975 studio track featuring Gary and three of the Red Hash players.- Both tracks are fine and still fit well within the album.
