Review: The Seekers - Hide & Seekers (1964)
Tracks: 1) This Little Light Of Mine; 2) Morning Town Ride; 3) The Water Is Wide; 4) Well Well Well; 5) Lady Mary; 6) We’re Moving On; 7) Ox Driving Song; 8) Kumbaya; 9) Blowin’ In The Wind; 10) The Eriskay Love Lilt; 11) Chilly Winds; 12) What Have They Done To The Rain.
REVIEW
The third and last Seekers album before the band «sold out» and broke through to international fame is even more of a discographical mess than the previous two: in Germany it was released simply as The Seekers (though it had nothing to do with the self-titled second album), in the US it was titled The New Seekers (as if there were The Old Seekers?), and several years later, after the group had disbanded, it was re-released for the European markets as The Four & Only Seekers. The diagnostic sign is that they all begin with ‘This Little Light Of Mine’, so we’re just gonna let it shine and this will give us the power divine to battle the evil schemes of nefarious record label executives.
Although upon first sight the music here seems to be just the same standard Seekers fare, in reality there already were some important changes in the air. The most significant of these was that the band had finally reached the British shores, where they originally intended to spend only a little time, but were quickly picked up by the World Record Club label and offered a chance to work and record five hundred, uh, that is, ten thousand miles away from home. Naturally, they could not go back home this ole way, because who the heck would prefer Melbourne over London? With much more lucrative commercial proposals, chances to mingle with heroes of the British Invasion, superb recording studios, and even the World Record Club’s own Bobby Richards Orchestra at their disposal, the only catch was that they ran the danger of getting swallowed up in a much larger, much more competitive field — but in all actuality, few, if any, bands in Britain sounded like the Seekers at the time: straightforward folk was more of an individual affair, represented by loners like Shirley Collins, while bands that did cover folk repertoire did it more in a folk-rock vein, like the closely titled Searchers, whose first love was rock’n’roll and who only gradually came to embrace a more «traditionally-sanctioned» sound.
If I understand correctly (reliable chronological information on the Seekers is not the easiest thing to come by), Hide & Seekers was recorded and released before the group’s fateful encounter with Tom Springfield that produced ‘I’ll Never Find Another You’; at least, there is no mention of anything of the sort in the original liner notes, which mainly just praise the Seekers for their work on the «international folksong» circuit. Indeed, almost every inclusion on the album goes back at least 50 to 100–200 years back in history: almost, because the band also tentatively begins to acknowledge the new «post-folk» generation of singer-songwriters, covering Dylan’s ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ and Malvina Reynolds’ ‘What Have They Done To The Rain’ — neither of the two covers does anything particularly interesting to the originals, but if you are in love with Judith or anything, you will be thrilled to hear her take lead vocals on both of them.
The big musical difference is the presence of the Bobby Richards Orchestra on at least half of the tracks, which, some might say, sentimentalizes and cheapens the effort, while others might insist that it adds a sense of grandiosity and epicness to the band’s formerly secluded, chamber-like sound. I would be in the middle here — I don’t think the orchestra manages to spoil any of the songs, largely because they had the good sense to keep it politely in the background, without overwhelming either the singers or even the players; but I also think that each and every song here would work just as efficiently on its own, because when the Seekers are really in the zone, they need no amplification to convince us of their worth. I do like the extra sonic depth of the production, though: a subtle bit of echo / reverb on the vocals goes a longer way to achieve that coveted effect of solemnity than an entire orchestra.
Case in point — ‘Lady Mary’, an old ballad on a fairly mysterious subject whose lyrics almost ring like an Edgar Allan Poe poem; it seems to have first been published in Harper’s Magazine in 1871, credited to somebody called Francis Behrynge, but the Seekers most likely heard it from Joan Baez (oddly enough, both this song and several other traditional ones, even including ‘Kumbaya’, are unscrupulously credited to all four band members on the original vinyl; apparently, the people at World Record Club were ever so much more business-savvy than those at W&G). The opening orchestral swoop, with a really cheap violin line, promises you schmaltz; but once Judith steps in with the opening line ("he came from his palace grand..."), the orchestra humbly retreats to the pit, letting the lady overwhelm you with her interpretation — which, I must say, in this particular case totally puts Baez to shame. Joan sings the song more or less like she sings everything else, with a steady, even type of phrasing throughout; Judith imbues it with Shakesperian grandness, with a sharp shift in pitch from "the look in his sad dark eyes / more tender than words could be" to "but I was nothing to him / and he was the world to me" that puts such a stern, tragic flair into "but I was nothing to him" that it really makes you care for the poor broken-hearted protagonist. In the end, the strings neither spoil nor help out the picture — but the faraway, ghostly production on Judith’s voice makes a lot of difference. It is not often that you find a Seekers track which can make you forget all about the lightweight nature of this band, but ‘Lady Mary’ is that early masterpiece which does the trick.
Other than that, the record goes a bit too heavy on the spiritual side: ‘This Little Light Of Mine’, ‘Well Well Well’, ‘We’re Moving On’, and ‘Kumbaya’ (which, along with ‘Chilly Winds’, was specially re-recorded for this album), almost turn the album into a celebration of «Negro Gospel», as the liner notes describe the material, which is a bit of a step back from the emphasized diversity of the previous LP. There is plenty of verve in those performances, of course, but hardly any ground for offering inventive personal interpretation, as in the case of ‘Lady Mary’, and there is only so much spiritual demand for ‘Kumbaya’ in our life that we can take, I suppose. There are also so many versions of the Scottish classic ‘The Water Is Wide’ that this particular one, on which Bruce takes lead vocals, is just «nice» (for a special type of experience, I’d rather pull out Dylan’s performance from the Rolling Thunder Revue).
Perhaps the best news, as a whole, is that, despite the changed circumstances, the Seekers had not lost their original, semi-professional, semi-homebrewn charm; the deeper production and the orchestral arrangements certainly put them on a throne and elevate them above the campfire which they shared with us on the previous two albums, but not high enough to prevent us from still sharing a sense of unity. That sense would eventually be diminished, exactly the way it works with so many artists spoiled by fame and fortune, but Hide & Seekers does not even hint at potential disappointments to come.
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