After a long period of illness, Beverley Martyn has re-emerged with another of her sporadic recordings. Martyn is a name remembered by some from the amazingly creative folk–rock period of the late 1960s and early 70s England. She married the mercurial John Martyn, with whom she made two very good albums, Stormbringer! and The Road to Ruin, before John went on to have a major solo career. The marriage was difficult and ended in 1979. Martyn was a big part of that scene and knew them all: Nick Drake, Bert Jansch, Sandy Denny and Paul Simon in his formative, folkie years in the UK, and she sang with The Levee Breakers. Her voice does not have the crystal-clear folk quality of contemporaries Sandy Denny or Linda Thompson, rather it is more harsh and bluesy, similar to the world-weary, seen-it-all feel of Marianne Faithfull. Martyn’s gritty version of the Memphis Minnie song ‘When the Levee Breaks’ is outstanding, and features some howling electric guitar work.

The song that has created much interest in the music press is the opening track of The Phoenix & the Turtle, ‘Reckless Jane’, co-written with Nick Drake back in 1974. Originally written as a fun exercise, it has a lot more gravitas now, given the life Martyn has lived, and its beautiful acoustic guitar and string arrangement eerily evoke the sound of the era. The other openly autobiographical song is ‘Women and Malt Whiskey’, which addresses her and John’s influences, Dylan and guitar guru Davy Graham respectively, as well as John’s self-destructive bent.

Paul Barr