Buffy Sainte-Marie - Fire Fleet And Candlelight '1967

Tracks list

Tracklist

01. The Seeds Of Brotherhood
02. Summer Boy
03. The Circle Game
04. Lyke Wake Dirge
05. Song To A Seagull
06. Doggett's Gap
07. The Wedding Song
08. 97 Men In This Here Town
09. Lord Randall
10. The Carousel
11. T'es Pas Un Autre
12. Little Boy Dark Eyes
13. Reynardine-A Vampire Legend
14. Hey, Little Bird

Fire & Fleet & Candlelight was ridiculously over-eclectic, so much so that it
comes as a surprise when the 14 songs have finished to find that the total
length of the album is a mere 37 minutes. That doesn't mean there's not some
worthy material, but the arrangements and material are all over the place.
Variety is a good thing, but only when the quality is extremely consistent, and
this 1967 album is erratic. "The Seeds of Brotherhood" is so in line with the
kind of utopian singalong common to the folk revival that it inadvertently
sounds like a parody of itself. Yet songs with orchestral arrangement by Peter
Schickele are entirely different, with "Summer Boy" and "The Carousel" going
into the Baroque-folk that Judy Collins was mastering during the same era. Joni
Mitchell's "The Circle Game" and "Song to a Seagull" both predate Mitchell's
release of her own versions, and "The Circle Game" sounds like Sainte-Marie's
shot at making it into a hit single, with more straightforward pop/rock
production than anything else she cut at the time. "Song to a Seagull," by
contrast, is quite close in arrangement and vocal delivery to the treatment
Mitchell gave it on her 1968 debut album. Her interpretation of the traditional
"Lyke Wake Dirge" verges on the creepy; her cover of Bascom Lamar Lunsford's
"Doggett's Gap" goes way back to her earliest folk roots, complete with
mouth-bow; "97 Men in This Here Town Would Give a Half a Grand in Silver Just to
Follow Me Down" is her fling at good-timey rock. There are yet more cuts that
catch you off-guard, like the French-language pop reworking of her "Until It's
Time for You to Go"; "Reynardine -- A Vampire Legend," a traditional song with
only vocals and mouth-bow; and "Hey, Little Bird," whose upbeat symphonic pop
vaguely foreshadows her songs for Sesame Street. Though not without its rewards,
on the whole it's an unnerving record.

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