When the excellent poet, artist and visionary William Blake climbed out of his tree filled with angels for long enough to write [I]Songs Of Innocence [/I]and [I]Songs Of Experience[/I] some 200 years ago, he could never have guessed what he was starting. Like naive art, for starters, and hippies, anti-capitalist rioters and most of rock’s noble savages – notably [a]Richard Ashcroft[/a] – who’ve found profundity in the English countryside and not wearing shoes.
The path of influence that led from Blake to a couple of concept albums made by a reformed smackhead and jazz arranger for hire in the late-’60s is more bewildering than most, however. For while Blake’s [I]Innocence [/I]and [I]Experience[/I] expressed his spirituality in simple, isolated terms, [a]David Axelrod[/a]’s ‘Songs Of Innocence’ and ‘Songs Of Experience’ are some of the most anti-simple music you could come across.
Instead, the first CD releases of these obsessively sought-after albums shows them to be ornate and portentous works of orchestral psychedelia. Mercifully, Axelrod‘s fleet-footed and inspired enough to soar above his own pretensions. The formula’s fairly consistent throughout: the drummer sets off on a loosely funk beat (you’ll recognise most of the breaks from DJ Shadow and his derivatives); the massive orchestra surges on from one ecstatic pinnacle to another; and, eventually, a freaky guitar solo staggers in to nail this intense music back down to its late-’60s origins.
here, for sure – these are sky-kissingly high and divine albums that deserve their belated liberation from the trainspotter elite. And surely, even Blake would’ve approved of that.