Mark Fry – Dreaming With Alice
If you were to head over to AMG and look up their review of Mark Fry’s Dreaming With Alice, you would find the rather iniquitous quote “… reminiscent of Donovan’s forays into that area, though not as interesting.”
How wrong could they be? Dreaming With Alice, released only in Italy in 1972, possesses a certain magic that more than exonerates the cult that has built up around it over the years. As far as obscure acid folk rarities go, this is a stone-cold classic.
In fact, the only fault that can be found in it is the fact it was released in 1972, whereas it sounds as though it were recorded at the tail-end of the 1960s. The fact that music had moved on so much in the intervening years possibly accounts for the fact it could only secure an Italian release. Of course, nearly forty years on, when it was recorded is an irrelevance.
The title track ‘Dreaming With Alice’, a gently haunting lilt, is split into nine verses that punctuate the album. This too may have been a mistake, as the recently re-recorded version by Mark Fry himself and released on Fruits de Mer Records is superior as a single piece, allowing its dreamlike quality to flow over the listener uninterrupted.
‘The Witch’ continues the fascination amongst the psychedelic/acid folk set with all things witchy – other purveyors of witch-influenced lyricism include Donovan, Fairport Convention, and the Incredible String Band – with a spookily ethereal tale of a witch at the window saturated with chiming sitars, giving it that perfect otherworldly feel.
It’s the highlight of an album that’s as melodic as it is mesmeric, darkness and light in equal measures, and one made all the more remarkable by the fact that Mark Fry was still a teenager when it was written and recorded. Maybe it’s this infusion of childlike, fairy-tale innocence, untainted by cynicism, that makes Dreaming with Alice so special.
Dreaming With Alice is reissued by Sunbeam Records with extra tracks and available from Amazon.co.uk
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