In the liner notes to these carefully packaged reissues, all four of the Incredible String Band principals-- co-founder Clive Palmer, core duo Mike Heron and Robin Williamson, and Elektra records executive Joe Boyd-- offer their insights in separate essays. Three of them mention the smell of patchouli. Such were the times, certainly, but the ISB are loved equally by avant-garde musicians, psychedelia enthusiasts, and those slightly dweeby young gentlemen who hang around music shops on college campuses. The reissue of their first four albums probably put to rest any notion that the ISB were a properly great band, releasing just one true classic, but they were rarely anything less than brave, inspired, and profoundly weird.
These reissues contain no extras or unreleased material, which might call to question their utility, but much of this music has been out of print in the U.S., or at least difficult to acquire, for years (previous reclamations only unearthed odd pieces of the catalog). The remastering was necessary, but my old copy of The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter never sounded too thin or affectless; the new versions offer more space between the instruments and a general clarity, but they're not revelations in the way that many mid-1960s edits are.
The ISB probably weren't the first band to incorporate Eastern modes and instruments into folk music, but they were the first to achieve any manner of noticeable repute doing so. By 1968 the group was selling out venues like the Royal Albert Hall; they played at Woodstock. They had famous fans-- Paul McCartney and Robert Plant were public admirers-- and they still do: Stephen Malkmus once called ISB "the greatest band of all time." There remain plenty of reasons to think about the ISB in 2010, not the least of which are the raves garnered by the likes of Joanna Newsom and Grizzly Bear. Messy, schoolyard orchestras like Neutral Milk Hotel and the Decemberists owe a debt as well.
The ISB met while playing in folk clubs around Scotland. They started slowly: Their self-titled debut was a mostly guitars-and-voices affair that openly aped Bob Dylan and Donovan. Heron and Williamson would grow to be legitimately adventurous songwriters, but neither is an overbearing personality, and the debut is understated. Gypsy violins ("Maybe Someday") and Celtic influences ("Schaeffer's Jig") hinted at broader vistas, but the self-titled is strictly for completists.
After the debut, Palmer split for the hippie trail while Williamson departed for Morocco, later returning with armfuls of (at the time) exotic instruments. The 5000 Spirits or Layers of the Onion was released during 1967's "Summer of Love", and everything from the album's painfully fried cover to its gently progressive arrangements (sitars, saloon pianos, bongos) reinforces this. Williamson and Heron earn credit as individual songwriters, and each album contains hints of competition. Heron wins 5000 Spirits via "The Hedgehog's Song", a small blues-pop masterpiece, and the fact that the more adventurous Williamson still seems dependent on the facile eccentricity of psychedelia.
Nothing, however, was facile about The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter. The band finally earns its name, stuffing complex songs full of dulcimers, gimbris, ouds, and harps. The ISB are pretty easy to figure out, if you want to: Hangman's is their best album, and its centerpiece, Heron's "A Very Cellular Song", is their best song. It's a 13-minute tour de force, and I'd swap the band's first two albums for it to last one minute longer, so completely does it outpace the rest of their catalog. The rest of Hangman's is similarly superior, as everything from the pop gems ("Mercy I Cry City") to the true oddities ("The Minotaur's Song", in which the narrator bellows, "Porridge for my porridge bowl!" and a chorus echoes him, "Porridge for his porridge bowl!") seem richer, weirder, and more fun.
Hangman's showed the band could benefit from excess, and its 2xLP followup, Wee Tam and the Big Huge, tested that. Released the same year as Hangman's, Official Band Girlfriends Rose and Licorice played increasing roles in loosely conceived epics about religion and myth. It's easier listening than Hangman's, with the band blending psych and folk smoothly; sitars rub against guitars without any hint of experimentation. Williamson's monstrous nine-minute jams ("Ducks on a Pond" and "Maya") themselves justify the sprawl, but the band also loses itself in religious imagery ("The Mountain of God") and far-flung melodies.
Many reissues see the involved rally around the idea that it's "all about the music, man" in some sort of arcane attempt to shout down context. The ISB are delightfully aware of their place in history, as everything from their essays to the unmistakably dated 5000 Spirits suggests. The patchouli, it turns out, mattered. But the ISB helped bring Eastern and African influence to folk music, and Hangman's and WT&TBH set the table for some of the conceptual epics we still see today. The Incredible String Band: come for the context, stay for the minotaur's porridge.
