John Martyn - Solid Air (1LP/Gat)
John Martyn – Solid Air is widely regarded as John Martyn's masterpiece, an album that sits somewhere between folk, jazz, blues and rock without ever fitting comfortably into any of them. Released in 1973, it captures Martyn at his most distinctive, combining remarkable guitar playing with a smoky, increasingly blurred vocal style that makes the record instantly recognisable.
The beautiful title track was written for Martyn's friend Nick Drake and remains one of his finest songs, while "May You Never" is perhaps his best-known composition – warm, intimate and deceptively simple. Elsewhere, "I'd Rather Be the Devil" transforms the Skip James blues into something hypnotic and almost otherworldly, driven by Martyn's pioneering use of effects and the Echoplex to create layers of sound from his guitar.
What makes Solid Air so special is its atmosphere. Danny Thompson's superb double bass provides the perfect partner to Martyn's guitar, and the performances have a loose, late-night quality that often feels closer to a small jazz club than a conventional folk recording. There is plenty of space in the music, with the musicians seemingly responding to one another rather than simply following arrangements.
More than five decades later, Solid Air still sounds wonderfully individual. Relaxed on the surface but filled with invention underneath, it is one of the great British singer-songwriter albums of the 1970s and an ideal introduction to John Martyn's extraordinary music.