Sunbeam Rec.
Loudest whisper : The Children Of Lir (UK,1974;bonus:1973-1976)****°
The name does not refer to the movie from the same days, but referred to the taking of the whispery side of folk, and the loudest influence from late ‘60s style change direction to a harder edge stimulated by groups like Hendrix & Cream. The title of the album refers to the legend of Irish king Lir and his doomed children to live as swans. The story inspired to make it a musical, with its show and a musical concept. The album was produced by Leo O’Kelly from Tir Na Nog.
The music can be regarded as basically a folk-opera, but with a great style range. The album starts with a string quartet arrangement (with the band, partly electric) and has various other fine moments with it, very English in style. Elsewhere mostly acoustic guitars lead (with the orchestra) and soft lead vocals. Especially on “Septimus” and a few times elsewhere, John Sebastian here comes to mind. A children choir enriches many moments. Here often we can mention a certain Mama’s & Papas influence in the harmony vocals but it sounds a bit more like religious rock hippies singing or having arranged this, or with some “spiritual” feeling. Elsewhere the harmony vocals are a mixture of English and some American traditions. The “rock” influence more than once makes the style harder, and with stronger and more electric guitar passages on some tracks. The result of all this sounds great and highly original, and this could have become big in its time. But when UK Polydor wasn’t interested in promoting the album to an international market, the Irish based label didn’t add much more effort. According to the liner notes, additionally to this fact, a 20 minute track of “Perseus” was lost, and another track called “William B” was refused permission to quote from ‘the stolen child” from Yeats, so had to be rewritten before it became “false prophets”, the lead track for the debut single of the band. All these things made a difficult start for the album. Only 500 copies were pressed. It took until the nineties, when the album had already gained a legendary status, before Kissing Spell reissued the album, something which was taken over with another edition by Si-Wan in Korea. Kissing Spell also released a 1975 self-recorded live recording of the group with a different, female vocalist. Also in the ‘90s, another more traditional version of this album was self-released on Fiona Records, with the appearance of Donovan. A larger folk-opera version still lives on until today.
From the bonus tracks, "False Prophets" is in hard rock style ! "Wrong and Right" with female vocalist, also is in a more progressive rock style. One of the two demo tracks, in a similar style (recalling “Heart”,..), are also with the same vocalist. Last (over 10 minutes) bonus track is the soundtrack to the work's original TV broadcast of "Children of Lir". It is mixed with spoken word, and comes in sphere closer to groups like Bread, Love & Dreams and Shide & Acorn, Magna Carta,..). These tracks are another surprise, -and in very good quality,- to the already classical album. Another must from the already impressive Sunbeam catalogue.
Other albums still on CD/LP : Maiden Of Sorrow (1975), Loudest Whisper II ('80s) on Kissing Spell Records.
PS. I have heard the box from Loudest Whisper as well. Although the price is acceptible I think the most essential material still remains this Children Of Lir album. It is not a must to look too much further if you want the same level of inspiration and quality.
