RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
JOHN MARTYN: So Far So Good.
John Martyn (vocals, guitar); instrumental accompaniment. May You Never; Bless the Weather; Head and Heart; Over the Hill; Spencer the Rover; Glistening Glyndebourne; and three others.
ISLAND ILPS-9484 $6.98
8 Track YSl-9484 $7.98
Cassette ZCl-9484 $7.98.
Performance: Spaced-out
Recording: Mostly very good
“Categorically. John Martyn is the English type of enigma we Americans have in Tim Hardin and used to have in Tim Buckley – the jazz-folkie. Martyn started out as a foikie only, or so people 
thought, but he lost the purists by doing such things as using a revolving Leslie speaker for his guitar on old Gaelic airs. His singing style had evolved into a jazzy montage of slurrings and bendings by the time he recorded the albums from which these selections are reissued, “Bless the Weather,” “Solid Air,” and “Sunday’s Child.”
You couldn’t call this a greatest hits album, at least not in America where in most parts of the country it would take a private detective to find one of Martyn’s earlier releases, but it will do nicely as a retrospective. And, lo and behold, May You Never and Over the Hill, this time around, are getting some deserved air play, at least in the area of New England where I live. These two are simpler and more tuneful than the “”typical”” jazz-period Martyn song, of which Solid Air is a good example: a blues progression stretched to sixteen measures and gussied up beyond recognition, where the trick is to listen to the voice as an instrument and to syllables rather than words.”
“So Far So Good” darts back and forth between the experimental and the recognizable, as Martyn himself has been doing, but its values are musical and its standards are high.
If you relax and go where it goes, you ‘ll find the trip invigorating.
Noel Coppage
Stereo Review
1 November 1977
