Donovan
Slow Down World

I think I know how Donovan felt in 1976, and certainly, it can't be said that he was doing very well: his albums are one flop after another, largely undeserved failures, and his recording contract with Epic is nearing its end, just one more album and then the relationship can be considered concluded. After all, this major label had amply demonstrated a total indifference toward Donovan in previous years, and both parties are eager to end this now unfruitful bond; when thinking of this type of album, created by artists dealing with a contract to fulfill, real flops come to mind, such as "Leather Jackets" by Elton John, albums conceived with the most lowly bottom-of-the-barrel scraping purely as a contractual obligation. Well, this is absolutely not the case: Donovan, being the intelligent artist he has always been, understands that his record company would not promote him in any way, so attempting another assault on the mainstream audience like "7-Tease" would be pointless, and thus he comes out with an album "for a select few," a stunning folk record dedicated to all those who have never stopped following and loving him.

"Slow Down World" is an album made with heart: you can feel it, you can perceive it in every single vibration of the nine songs that compose it, Donovan no longer tries to ride the wave of the times, and "Slow Down World" is a record that is timeless: simple, but not poor, on the contrary, characterized by remarkable refinement and stylistic taste, highlighted by a clean, serene, soft, transparent sound, in search of a new essentiality. This description may echo the same guidelines of the not-so-great "Essence To Essence" from a few years earlier, but the comparison between these two albums simply does not exist: "Slow Down World" is truly on another planet: the evocative and rarefied atmosphere of "Dark-Eyed Blue Jean Angel", an acoustic ballad accompanied by flute and enveloping orchestrations, transports the listener to a sound dimension made of echoes, visions, distant, almost exotic, and blurred melodies, which also appear in his covers of his friend and mentor Derroll Adams: an ecstatic and idealistic collection "The Mountain", where Donovan enchants with only an acoustic guitar accompanied by the song of sparrows, and "My Love Is True", more weighty and pressing, which takes on the fascinating semblance of a cadenced Russian dance, filled with a characteristic dramatic epic conferred by sinuous strings. These hypnotic atmospheres reach their climax with the serpentine melody of "Black Widow", a silky, echoing, and insinuating melody, unstable, enhanced by a singing of malicious elegance and drenched in absolute refinement from every point of view, which dissipates into an unsettled instrumental coda.

"Slow Down World" also has a more extroverted side that is expressed especially with "Cryin' Shame", a very pleasant and soft folk ballad accompanied by harmonica and supported by choirs that accompany Donovan's voice, making the song's lyrics less bitter and resigned, and especially an anthem to universal brotherhood like "Children Of The World", which despite being the most limited and certainly most appeasing episode of the album, is appreciated for the captivating flow of the verses (which is lost in an overly emphatic chorus) and for a nice guitar riff, managing to express stylistic features that would be widely used and abused in the years to come ("We Are The World", "Heal The World" and so on) with much more class, sincerity, and without any profit motives. On the other hand, the long and elaborate "A Well-Known Has Been" expresses very directly and explicitly the artist's sense of frustration: this song reinterprets in a deliciously personal way the disco-funk sounds that were very fashionable at the time, also employing the soul choirs typical of "7-Tease", resulting in a rhythmic but apathetic, bitter, awkwardly danceable and undoubtedly original track. The duty of closing the album falls to a heartwarming, touching, simple ballad, almost a lullaby introduced by a music box, namely "Slow Down World", worthy of the best Ralph McTell, followed by a brief, fun, and rhythmic "Liberation Rag", traditional American folk restyled in Donovan's key.

This marvelous album, as I've already said before, is Donovan's best of the '70s alongside "7-Tease", and these are two records that complement each other: the all-round pop musician of the 1974 album and the gentle and sensitive minstrel of "Slow Down World", which in turn is a varied, eclectic, rich in influences, and above all, excellent product from every point of view: this is the last 5-star album for Philip Donovan Leitch (although "Neutronica" from 1980 comes quite close), also to be considered the album of definitive maturity, wisdom, and balance.