Commoner's Crown - STEELEYE SPAN***

Little Sir Hugh/Bach Goes To Limerick/Long Lankin/Dogs & Ferrets/Galtee Farmer/Demon Lover/Elf Call/Weary Cutters/New York Girls

Steeleye Span were the pre-eminent British folk group during the mid 1970s, aided by the incredible voice of Maddy Prior. Commoner’s Crown features a mix of traditional folk songs together with some novelty items. (UK:21)

“Commoner's Crown is my favourite of the albums I’ve heard by the group. Not a bad song here; even the minor ones have a pleasing quality. This one isn’t the most rock oriented or the most folky of the band’s output. It’s somewhere in the middle. Great guitar, drumming, fiddling and bass playing abound, and Maddy Prior is at her absolute best vocally.”

“Giving Little Sir Hugh and Demon Lover irresistible choruses was a good idea. But the best is Long Lankin; Maddy Prior's vocals in the slower sections are tops, especially the high harmonies. Every song here is great, even the campier ones have their moments.”

“One thing about Old English folk tunes is that they can all sound the same after awhile. What the group managed to do during this period was arrange these songs into either rollicking or haunting modern folk songs using various timbres of the instruments of their time while performing them in the spirit of a former time. Every song comes off well, especially the sublimely haunting Long Lankin and the a cappella Weary Cutters. The ensemble singing during the chorus of Demon Lover punctuated by the electric guitar statement is sweet. Galtee Farmer manages to be both haunting and rollicking at once, driven by a superb guitar and bass line. New York Girls may seem out of place but it serves to end the album on a humorous note after the more severe and sombre tunes that precede it.”

“An uneven album, the problem is that two of the tracks, Little Sir Hugh and Long Lankin, are so good that the rest suffer significantly in comparison.”

“This contains one of the most anthemic of all Steeleye Span songs Long Lankin, probably one of their best-loved songs of blood-letting and general creepiness Dogs & Ferrets is an example of their more adventurous vocal work, with its syncopated rhythms and staggered harmonies. The star for me however, is Bach Goes To Limerick, a wonderful baroque spoof blended with an Irish jig, featuring superb violin and mandolin. Some of the rest could be called filler by the ungenerous.”