Fantastic piece of gentle soft rock, filled with simple and effective bittersweet lyrics. Soundwise, delicado appropriately described it in his review as a "cooler and classier take on the Chad & Jeremy sound with superior performances, songwriting and arrangements". I can absolutely subscribe to that description, the whole album is a long lost softrock gem.

From The 12 Dreams Of Dr Sardonicus, this final track on side 2 has got to be one of the most beautiful songs with its full organ sound underpinning fragile high register vocals that develop into harmonies that send shivers all over. Recorded at a studio picked for it's resident organ, the quality of the recording is crystal!

A bewitching song about a young woman who, to win the hand of a handsome knight, does her rival sister in. The dead girl then comes back to haunt the �black-haired bride� as a harp fashioned from her breast bone and three locks of her hair. �Cruel� may seem too kindly a description of a girl who when her sister pleads, �Oh Sister, Sister, let me live, and all that�s mine I�ll surely give� says, �It�s your own true love I have and more, but thou shalt never come ashore� before abandoning her body to the rough North Sea. Cruel? Should the sister therefore be scalded for her little� transgression? She�s an evil and monstrous sister, surely? But then this is centuries past, a time when sibling murder and human harps were commonplace. I am not likely to understand in this more civilised 21st century. Which may be why the kids don�t really dig British folk music anymore, or the mighty Pentangle. And it�s a crying shame because this is a stunning track, hauntingly sung by Jacqui McShee. I hesitate to use the term �masterpiece� in case that great oracle of musicaltaste.com, fmars, overhears and tells me that I�m wrong.

One time member of the Sambalan�o Trio, Cesar Camargo Mariano, teams up with French teenage seductress, France Gall for this fast-paced jazz-samba. Her voice oozes innocence but also sex, like a French Astrud Gilberto. A true coquette.
The band was recorded in Brazil, the vocals recorded and overdubbed later in France. This track evokes the "international" feel of the 60's where covert deals were done in international airport lounges and in the back of limousines.

These days van the man seems merely content going down the pub and making up another zzzz soul blues jam that makes him dream of his younger days. But boy did he make music once ! Especially this hidden gem of blue eyed soul with a dash of that brown eyed girl melody he does so well. Perfect for escaping a grey november day .