Drag City
These Trails (US,re.2011)*****
I have noticed that in many many people’s list who have already heard numerous acid folk albums These Trails is always rated amongst their top 3 albums of all times, and it is indeed one of the best, most beautiful, most distinctive and despite its at times magical strangeness also one most accessible albums of its kind. It has been a while since last reissue, this time a photograph appeared and liner notes to explain the background story.
These trails was a shortlived unique romantic meeting point between Patrick Cockett (guitar, slide guitar, tabla, vocals) and Margaret Morgan (guitar, dulcimer, vocals), the beautiful Hawaiian mountains and ocean shores, with some musicians adding vision and depth, like Peter Coraggio and his assistant Dave Choy for their strongly committed Arp synthesizer contributions. Also included is a bit of guitar by Eric Kingsburry and ipu by Ron Rosha, some production work by Peter Coraggio and engineering by wayne Carvalho and that was it. The moments were bliss, something that can never be repeated again.
The originally starts already in the way of singing and in the subtle overdubs and the attractive vibrations in the voice. Some of the songs are clearly influenced by Hawaiian singing and language. Not mentioned as instrumentation but I also hear a cello a couple of times and a sitar. Beautiful are the dual guitar themes too, with a theme that returns a couple of times. A few times, like on “Hello Lou” are some sudden theme openings, with surreal effects and directions, unexpected fields of exploration expanding a normal song context and singing into something unique full of emotional richness and wonder.
I have the impression the sound of this reissue is slightly different from the first edition, not sure if in the end this really improved the sound and changed the magic a bit.
