Margo Guryan: Sunday Morning
From: Take a Picture [Bell, 1968]

Doris: You Never Come Closer
From: Did You Give the World Some Love Today Baby [EMI, 1970]

Linda Perhacs: Parallelograms
From: Parallelograms a [Kapp Records, 1970]

It seems my rush to welcome in the summer sun was a little premature. The blazing 30s of last week have been replaced by the low 20s and torrential storms in the UK which has put a slight dampener on my general mood and my desire to blaze out songs to sip Pimms to.

Still, I’ll never let a spot of rain and the fact the my fingers are turning numb stop me from posting good music so here you are, some summer songs from the ladies.

While geographically and, in many ways, sonically, miles apart, I’ve always linked New Yorker Margo Guryan’s Take A Picture and Swedish Doris Svensson’s Did You Give The World Some Love Today together in my mind garden.

Maybe it is just down to the fact that I discovered them within a few months of each other but to me the two albums work well as a pair, straddling the bridge between folk, pop and something else entirely while also both being great albums for a lazy summer day.

Margo’s Sunday Morning, which was originally recorded by Spanky & The Gang, has a wonderfully crisp sound with clear drums, guitar twang and then Margo’s ethereal vocals floating over the top, kind of like a Velvet Underground and Nico on prozac. To some as cheesy as they come, I just get caught by the little change down of the guitar at the chorus and am sold anew every time the hand claps enter. See what you think and let me know.

Funnily enough, while I was having a little google on Doris’ Did You Give The World Some Love Today I found a site listing this as a Doris Day album. While there are undoubtedly moments on the LP that are on the singalong side I find it hard to imagine Ms Day ever putting her vocals to something like You Never Come Closer. A psych fuelled brooding number with looping bass and a guitar line that follows Doris’ vocals as piano and other instrumentation fades in and out. Like some 70s version of Portishead, great heady stuff.

As a bonus track and something that just leapt into my head when I was posting this is Parallelograms off one of the most gorgeous albums I’ve ever laid my ears to, Linda Perhacs’ 1970 release. While travelling in her own orbit as a satellite distant from pretty much any artists I can think of the summer sadness vibes still creep through the ethereal psychedelic folk to create something beautiful, hypnotic, jarring and untouchable. Really quite one of the most extraordinary albums I know.

Susan Christie: Paint A Lady and Yesterday, Where’s My Mind?
From: Paint A Lady [Finders Keepers, 2006]

You may have picked up from my previous posts on Ruth Copeland and Lyn Christopher that I’m a 100% sucker for a certain type of female folk rock. Anything with strong female vocals over tough and moody guitars makes me do the equivalent of a mental swoon and Susan Christie’s Paint A Lady is one of the strongest offerings I’ve come across yet.

A folk singer with more than a passing interest in the playfulness of psychedelia, Christie suffered the fate of many of the artists featured on the site in that she never received her proper dues. However, Christie went one step further than most, forgoing the usual pain of having her album slept on by instead seeing the record label never release her album at all. It was only due to a private press protected lovingly for years that the album was rediscovered and reissued recently by Finders Keepers.

So, onto the music. The title song itself, Paint A Lady, is a brilliantly laid back growler of a track, simmering with intent from the moment the music starts, lilting guitars hovering over some simple but great percussion. Similar in tone to Lyn Christopher’s Take Me With You, this track glows with confidence and swagger from Christie as she paints a tale of the monotony of life. By the time the harmonies enter in the chorus I can’t see how anyone wouldn’t be sold on the brilliance evident here.

I was torn with the second track to feature here, between the Copeland’s Medal like anger of For The Love Of A Soldier, the folky bliss of Rainy Day or the psychedelic wig out of Yesterday, Where’s My Mind?. Well I dithered and Rainy Day is a truly beautiful track but I thought you’d be most interested in the wig out so here it is. The track takes it’s time to get going, spending three minutes as Christie sets the scene of wandering the streets. However, the song builds and builds on it’s initial momentum until we are left with Christie screaming at God over heavy percussion and guitars. Excellent stuff.

The album is now readily available from Finders Keepers and they’ve done a decent job on the reissue. It’s rare that an album so long slept on is great from start to finish but I would highly, highly recommend picking this up.