Roy Harper
Album: Man And Myth
Label: Bella Union
Tracks: 7
Website: http://www.royharper.co.uk

Having received the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Lifetime Achievement Award earlier this year, just under a couple of years on from his 70th birthday concert at the Royal Festival Hall, Roy's being increasingly - if belatedly - appreciated as the unique artist he undoubtedly is, and, one might say, the very epitome of "The Original Awkward Cuss raised to the level of genius" (a phrase actually used by Robert Simpson to describe fellow British composer Havergal Brian). Roy's supreme personal integrity and perennially, admirably uncompromising stance has meant that he would not endeavour to release a followup to his fine 2000 album The Green Man just for the sake of it (or to appease the gods of marketing), but instead to bide his time until he had the will to make another record. Now, at long last, we can celebrate the return to the recording scene of the original Sophisticated Beggar - the man whose magnificent Flat Baroque And Berserk LP my father ordered me to return to the record shop simply because he found the cover offensive (ha!).

No doubt partly as a result of the plaudits surrounding him over the past couple of years, especially those from the younger generation of artists intent on checking out key artists they'd heard of as being influential, Man And Myth is a work of extraordinary confidence and impressive power, which shows unequivocally and typically defiantly that "the man can still cut it" (and how!). It capitalises on Roy's proven strengths as a lyric writer, singer and guitarist, embracing his familiar preoccupations and themes with all the intelligence, passion, insight, wit and venom we associate with his work. And while it presents no surprises in the literal sense (in that its sequence of seven telling tracks includes, in best Harper tradition, a 15-minute "long song" that's part of a linked 23-minute epic album-finale), its enduring deep commitment and genuine power and artistic consistency may surprise those listeners who might now have been ready to write Roy off as another tired old hippie parading immemorial clichés and jumping on the comeback bandwagon.

There's no disgrace in the fact that Roy's as angry as ever, his justified anger as always tempered by right-minded indignance and (if occasionally prone to a trite turn of phrase) his writing remains suitably economic, pithy and above all still highly relevant to our time; he can still rant with the best, as The Enemy and Cloud Cuckooland both exemplify par excellence (although the presence of Pete Townshend's thrusting lead guitar on the crashing, rocking latter track just might also increase the sense of irony that we will get fooled again!). It's great too that the more lyrical, personal, introspective side to Roy's writing is also given full rein, on the touchingly elegiac January Man and the eastern-inflected The Stranger with its barely-concealed indictment of the alienation that contemporary society can bring.. All of these contrasted utterances show Roy to be still very much in fine voice too, as the perceptive outsider still capable of expounding emotional bases ranging from contempt for lust and greed, painful realisation of the ageing process and loss of identity to unutterable sadness and regret: gutsily raising Cain (The Enemy), gently wistful (Time Is Temporary) or waxing confidential with controlled delicacy (Heaven Is Here). The last-mentioned song, which together with its successor (and tender "forever" postlude) The Exile represents the "myth" side of the album, rejoices in a seductive, aromatic (if at times cryptic and more than slightly autobiographical) narrative replete with resonances from ancient Greek myth, and contains some of the disc's most compelling and thoughtful imagery, all couched in a memorably characterful musical backdrop which features Tony Franklin's outstanding fretless bass work and a neat Robert Kirby-style string arrangement. However, musicianship on the remainder of the album is no less keen, and the settings, coordinated by Jonathan Wilson and John Fitzgerald, are no less enticing, and prove an ideal foil for Roy's often contradictory yet invariably percipient verbal musings on life and death.

OK, Roy may be necessarily wary of the old ghost (The Stranger), but it can't help but continue to inform his writing, which retains all its trademark emotional honesty. Man And Myth is nothing short of masterly - welcome back, Roy.

David Kidman