Terry Reid
Album: River
Label: BGO
Tracks: 7
Website: http://www.terryreid.com

The man who famously turned down the chance to be vocalist with The New Yardbirds and then later Deep Purple, powerhouse soulful vocalist par excellence and no mean songwriter in his own right, was lauded in 1968 among rock cognoscenti as an impending "happening". Curiously, however, his first LP (Bang Bang, You're Terry Reid) wasn't even released in Britain, and perhaps as a result it became a bit of a cult classic.

At the time it was notable as much for its keen choice of cover versions as for its original material - and of course Terry's amazing voice. After a series of high-profile appearances on both sides of the pond (notably supporting Cream and the Stones), and a protracted series of legal wrangles with Mickie Most, Terry finally got round to making a third album over the two year period leading up to 1973; this album was River, and was released on Atlantic in that year.

It receives a timely CD reissue here, and proves an interesting, if to me musically uneven record. It balances a soulful bluesy soft-rock first side with an experimental acoustic introspection second side, on seven own-compositions that together embody the theme of the river and the journey. There's an overall ultra-loose feel to the album tracks, and an cool jazzy-anglo-American crossover vibe that recalls Van Morrison, John Martyn, Tim Buckley and early-70s Donovan just as much as Latin abstraction and at times aimless-sounding doodling across meandering scat soundscapes.

It puzzled me at the time, and even today I'm not sure what to make of it all, but there's no denying the power of Terry's voice throughout, or the key contributions made by guitarist David Lindley (with whom Terry had performed on stage at the Isle Of Wight Festival back in 1970) and percussionist Willie Bobo, and of course Atlantic house-producer Tom Dowd.

For some listeners, the music's intrinsic air of aimlessness will be its attraction, and although the charms of its reflective lyrics and restless abstract grooves tend to pass me by I wouldn't ever venture to suggest this record is unworthy of keeping available on catalogue, since it's considered by many to be, along with 1976's Seed Of Memory LP, possibly Terry's finest recorded achievement.

David Kidman