Various Gather In The Mushrooms - The British Folk Underground 1969 - 1975 (2-LP)

(ACE Records)  19 tracks, gatefold cover

Compiled by Bob Stanley to document the acid-folk scene, “Gather In The Mushrooms” was first issued as a CD-only release on Sanctuary in 2004; it proved so popular that a sequel entitled “Early Morning Hush” followed two years later.

This reissue of “Gather In The Mushrooms” contains the best of both long out-of-print compilations with a few additions - COB, Roy Harper, Fotheringay - that were not available to Sanctuary at the time. Although non-traditional, these songs have an authenticity, an autumnal atmosphere and a naivety of their own that proved influential in the neo-folk boom of the 00s (Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Alasdair Roberts, Tunng et al) but impossible to replicate. For many of these artists, folk music and the hippie world that surrounded it was a way of life in the late 60s, a way of escaping the Vietnam War, the Angry Brigade and the three-day week of the early 70s. Anne Briggs lived in a caravan in Suffolk, Shelagh McDonald lived in a tent, Vashti Bunyan went without electricity; they were not part-timers. When we listen to “Gather In The Mushrooms”, we are transported to a time when no one used the term “post-modernist”.

This may not have gone down well with die-hard political folkies, but more than five decades later, this music sounds very much like an England of yore - not necessarily an England of poachers and peddlers, but an England of long-haired youths in tie-dyed T-shirts, of bikers and hippies, of acoustic guitars in white stone houses. Groups like Stone Angel (bonus track, LP version only), Midwinter and Oberon made primitive, privately recorded folk albums; today they sound as distant and mystical as Alan Lomax's field recordings. The sincerity and folk savvy of a group like Forest become irrelevant once you hear something as eerie and evocative as “Graveyard”. Homemade, homely, warm as soup or cool as hoarfrost, this is music of innocence and rare beauty.