John Martyn
Bless the weather

It's strange that in the folk section, no one remembers this Scottish singer-songwriter with a warm and mellifluous voice that blends perfectly (especially in this album) with the unmistakable sound of his guitar. His music, so intimate, yet cultured and refined, enveloping and melancholic, in my opinion, places him in the "Olympus of great singer-songwriters."
John Martyn begins his, to say the least, fluctuating career (bitter disappointments, chronic problems with alcohol... and not only that) in the distant 1968, a little over twenty years old. His early works are associated with Island, a famous English label, for which, in the same years, Nick Drake, his great friend (to whom he would later dedicate the splendid "Solid Air"), was also recording, and it is precisely to the "Island years" that this album dates back.

An album that alternates splendid acoustic ballads ("Go easy", the same "Bless the weather", or "Just now" or "Head and heart") enriched by production and arrangements that also look towards jazz, blues, and instrumental digressions ("Glistening Glyndebourne"), which are the prelude to more experimental and committed records, one above all "Inside out".

The album closes with a sweet and delicate rendition of "Singin' in the rain" ... and never was an ending more appropriate for one of the most significant albums in British (to call it that is truly reductive) if not worldwide folk.