Lal Waterson (curated/collated by Marry Waterson & David Suff)
Album: … teach me to be a summer's morning… (Book & CD)
Label: Fledg'ling
Tracks: 15
Website: http://www.thebeesknees.com

It's 15 years since Lal passed away, and although her legacy has never been more widely appreciated, with constant reappraisal and re-evaluation of her output, much of it still remains quite cryptic even to its admirers. But in my view anything that might enable us to gain a deeper understanding of Lal's work is to be welcomed, and this latest artefact (masterminded by Lal's daughter Marry) proves both illuminating and revealing in portraying Lal's "life lived through making sense of the world through music, words and pictures".

It comes in a limited-edition format, as a robust hardback book of barely 40 pages that's crammed scrapbook-style with all manner of artwork - repro drawings, photos, oil paintings, and of course copious (if tantalising) extracts from lyrics scribbled or written in Lal's own hand. All of which serves to emphasise that this is a portrait of Lal as a compleat and versatile artist, not just a songwriter or singer. And the stylistic ragbag of her creativity, which encompasses the childlike, the romantic, the surreal, the gothic, the modernist and cubist, is both perplexing and truthfully consistent in its darkly playful wilfulness.

Encased crucially and yet almost apologetically within the front cover of the volume, however, is an absolute jewel of a CD that contains 15 of Lal's songs in early home demo recordings by Lal herself, mostly entirely solo and mostly with her own compellingly rudimentary and often strangely elliptical guitar accompaniment. This modus operandi accentuates the songs' raw, wild freshness of conception, their uncompromisingly oblique nature and their highly original, oft-times resolutely unconventional sense of melody and song structure. A majority of these recordings date from around 1971, from the original two reels of demo tapes of the songs written for the Bright Phoebus album; just five of these songs (Never The Same, The Scarecrow, To Make You Stay, Shady Lady and Red Wine & Promises) were to make it onto the record in the end, while others never reached the public domain except as covers by other singers (Evon Our Darling, Marvellous Companion, Shine, Piper's Way and Song For Thirza on the Shining Bright tribute CD; Anna Dixie and Once In A Blue Moon by Norma Waterson; and most recently of all, Black Horse on Lisa Knapp's latest album). Which leaves two songs since unreleased in any form: first the powerful May Butterfly, and second Telephone Raider, clearly recorded much later than the rest, sporting only Oliver Knight's deliquescent electric guitar for accompaniment.

Together this batch of demos convey, with startling immediacy, the essence of Lal's creative imagination, and amount to nothing less than a revelation. And whether or not you already know the songs at all (let alone well), you can't fail to be struck by the performances: the spellbinding, tender intensity and intimacy, both touching and deeply moving in their emotionally laid-bare state and necessary textural starkness. Special moments include Lal's use of piano to gallop over the musical field behind her shockingly vulnerable portrait of Anna Dixie; Mike's close-wrought vocal contributions to Black Horse and Shine; and Marry's gorgeous perfumed harmonies on Once In A Blue Moon, which Marry describes as "a song we sang together, unmixed and forgotten for 15 years". While there's also some fascinating comparison mileage to be unearthed in the lyric variations of these early demos, for example The Scarecrow, here sung by Lal herself (though Mike sings it on the actual Bright Phoebus LP), where the unsettling third verse has "to a pole they tied a man new born"…

Just for clarity, it would've been good to've had more precise documentation as to the provenance of these valuable recordings; but that's the only real flaw in an otherwise brilliant package whose imaginative conception mirrors Lal's own rarefied beauty and vibrant artistry. Taking the book's title back out into the title of the song whence it originates, this is a wholly treasurable release; an extraordinary portrait of an extraordinary lady, and one that's likely "to make you stay" in Lal's unique and complex emotional world.

David Kidman