Julie Tippetts - Sunset Glow (1975)

Julie Tippetts - Sunset Glow (1975)

Julie Tippetts began as Julie Driscoll, a popular singer in the 1960s straddling the lines between blues, jazz, and folk. She initially started out with keyboardist Brian Auger. Later on, she became the partner of pianist extraordinaire Keith Tippett. With Tippett, she became increasingly experimental, lending significant voice to his ambitious jazz-prog orchestra project Centipede and the 1971 release Septober Energy.
Sunset Glow was released in the mid-70s, and like Robert Wyatt's albums from around this time, it features a formidable supporting act of Canterbury veterans; most had played with Julie on her excellent 1969 album. The plaintive duskiness of "Mind of a Child" starts off sounding fairly conventional, but with such subtle touches like Tippett's harmonium and the introduction of dissonances from the horns, at first gently piercing then building to great blasts of sound, quickly distinguish this from the run-of-the-mill adult pop of the day. "Oceans and Sky" is another example of contained volatility that seems to bubble throughout this album. The song begins suggesting a seemingly straightforward blues shuffle, but proceeds to build up to a rakish climax of Julie's avant-vocalese, Tippett's masterful piano scurrying, and the vibrant arrangement of the Canterbury horns (unmistakable to anybody who's carefully perused the post-psychedelic Soft Machine albums).

The two masterpieces on this album, both unsettling in their unconventional beauty and casting an eye towards Eastern horizons, are "Sunset Glow" and "Lilies." Both tracks are particularly notable for conveying a polytonal quality (i.e., sounding as if being played in two different keys), a subcomponent of which is marked by OM-like repetitions (e.g., the punctuation of the repeated notes by horn and voice in the title track; the soft background chant in "Lilies"). Pushing and pulling against the remainder of the song, Tippetts overlays elaborate vocal harmonies: a dense, jazzy character in "Sunset Glow" and a discomfiting line of fifths-harmonies in "Lilies."

One minor criticism is that in a few spots (e.g., "Oceans and Sky") the lyrics could have reached for more, as the music almost always does. That's about all you could say might be improved. With a quiet greatness, this is strongly recommended for those who enjoy albums like Rock Bottom and Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard. In fact, I would imagine the last track, "Behind the Eyes" is a dedication to Wyatt.
- Joe McGlinchey / Ground and Sky-

Tracklist

1. Mind Of A Child
2. Oceans And Sky (And Questions Why?)
3. Sunset Glow
4. Now If You Remember
5. Lilies
6. Shifting Still
7. What Is Living
8. Behind The Eyes (For A Friend, R.)