Bread Love & Dreams (UK Folk 1969)

In the late 1960s many folk artists were still almost entirely endebted to the traditional acoustic form, this band though would record three albums of which this is the first which moved away in turns into the more progressive area of extended concept song forms. This album has the innocent hall marks of a debut band for the era, much of the song writing is wide-eyed but being with a label like Decca they had the opportunity to expand from simple arrangements straight away. The first song 'Switch Out The Sun' is a naive club folk type song enlivened by strings, 'Virgin Kiss' is similar. Although the arrangement on 'The Least Said' is fairly pedestrian we are introduced to fantastic female vocals, an innocent delicate lead with a haunting siren backing. 'Falling Over Backwards' is a more stark sustained mood song with those siren vocals that remind sometimes of some of the ghostly early Pink Floyd, the mood is lost a little by being swamped in strings but this does have a strangeness and similarity to The Incredible String Band. 'Lady Of The Night' is a gorgeous stately ballad that is a fragile and precise as Trees' 'Garden of Jane Delawney'. There is a lot of mid-tempo strummed ordinary folk mixed with strings for a couple of tracks. 'Until She Needs You' repeats the formula of 'Lady Of The Night' to quite devastating effect. 'Mirrors' has a clear psychedelic influence with it's raga-dream like vocal and finger-bells opening before leading into a rather ordinary song. 'Poet's Song' is different again with a stunning delicate celtic folk song led by soaring flute, a style that was still embryonic at the time of this songs recording but here perfectly realised. 'The Yellow Bellied Redback' is a confused spoken story song with more than a hint of hippy whimsy about it. The last song is a terrible uptempo chugging road blues that doesn't suit the band at all. So we have like many debut albums a very mixed bag. There is a lot that is ordinary and pedestrian here but when it is good the tracks mentioned it sparkles with a rare touch and for these tracks it is well worth picking up for the collector. This isn't acid-folk for much of the album but the few tracks of quality shine brightly.