The Incredible String Band – The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter
Hippy Love Camp Atrocity
“Man alive! Please make it stop!” Listen very carefully on a crystal clear, dark winter’s night and you may well hear these words carried on a distant breeze, emanating from yours truly as I dream that once again I’m listening to The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter by The Incredible String Band.
Personally I blame Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin. It was following his recommendation that I bought said album in the first place. Word to the wise: Don’t be fooled if Mister Plant tries the same trick with you, tis all lies. Not that he sidled up to me in the bar of my local and out of the blue suggested I should part with some hard-earned in exchange for a ropy, hippy-folk recording. It was, in fact, within the pages of a Mojo magazine Psychedelic special a few years back, so heaven knows how many other unsuspecting record collections have been infected on the strength of his words.
The hirsute Zeppelin frontman had me in. Please don’t let the same happen to you.
Which brings me to the actual album, The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter, which along with Wee Tam and the Big Huge was the first of two releases by The Incredible String Band in 1968. I’ve done my damnedest to put it off, as you may well have suspected, but it’s my duty to listen once again so that you won’t have to. It’s not all peace and love here.
The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter might actually be an unintentional comedic masterpiece were it not so bloody awful to listen to. It’s as though following the filming of The Wicker Man, the inhabitants of Summerisle were unleashed in a recording studio to capitalise upon their success at setting light to Edward Woodward. This is raw, acoustic Brit-folk, laced with all manner of exotic instruments; the type of which only communities with an aversion to outsiders can produce. Think Steeleye Span without access to electricity or a tune.
The songs are given a slight ‘psychedelic’ slant by their subject matter, which I have to admit in places is suitably haunting – conjuring up images of shadowy cottages in the dark and lonely corners of coastal villages – a pity it’s so badly realised.
An exercise in awful hilarity has to be ‘The Minotaur’s Song’, which as you might suspect is sung from the perspective of a Minotaur – “I’m strong as the earth from which I’m born, I can’t dream well because of my horns” – to a hearty tankard swinging tune, with the remaining three members of the band chiming in every so often with accompanying vocals.
‘Witches Hat’ ups the twee badness with the chorus: “If I was a Witches Hat, Sitting on her head like a paraffin stove, I’d fly away and be a bat, Across the air I would rove…”
And on it goes. The folkiness and hippy-cred are turned well and truly up to eleven, with all manner of ethnic instrumentation thrown into the mix for good measure. In places it sounds like a very bad, privately educated, cod-world music band – the sort of thing Damon Albarn might be involved with – tripping up and falling down a steep staircase.
It’s a testament to the ready acceptance of the more experimental nature of music in the late 60s that The Incredible String Band were ever let within a hundred yards of a microphone, let alone signed to a record label like Elektra. Nowadays they would be left to bang their tambourines, slaughter their sitars, manhandle their sarangis, abuse a tune and generally cause distress to innocent wildlife in some sun-soaked woodland clearing.
Maybe there is a genuine beauty in there (I suspect perhaps there is, dependant on frame of mind) and if you choose to listen for yourself, you may well find it. But I’m afraid such tuneless and fey tweeness is wasted on these ears.
Some albums take a few listens before they find their stride… before something clicks and they become a firm favourite. Unfortunately The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter by the Incredible String Band doesn’t. Nor will it ever. Not for this reviewer anyway.
The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter is available on Warner Records and to buy from Amazon.co.uk
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Wow! – spot on & brilliantly written too (I’m still laughing). My elder sister subjected this extended aural torture on me for about 18 months while she courted a nerdy anorak-ish American student fan of this tone-deaf Tribe From Hell.
But consider – if this particular lot hadn’t made such an appalling record, then some other extended family of Lincoln-green clad create-your-own-reality hippy-folkies would surely have done, as it was not uncommon (in London certainly) at that time to find communal, arty, right-on well-to-do ‘families’ (typically within a large middle-class house) that saw the ‘Love, Peace & Freedom’ ethic as beginning at home.
And of course everyone within that social milieu could lay hands on a guitar and a Dylan album somewhere in the house – & usually a copy of A.S. Neil’s ‘Summerhill’ or Richard Neville’s ‘Playpower’ as manifestos (both great books, incidentally – I don’t see any books performing the same role for today’s teenage generation?).
“Lethal to innocent wildlife” ? Well, … take another look at that album cover – I do believe I see a distinct look of foreboding on Fido’s face!
As primary school kids c.1962 we had a hamper-load of around 200 45′s given to us, one of which was a folk single called “Out After Ale”, the chorus of which was -
“Sing Whoops-A-Saa, Tra-La-La-La, She Thought He’d Gone Out To Drink Ale” (!)
p.s. thanks for a great website with great writing – I look forward to exploring it more fully at ridiculous hours. And the one rock band post-1979 that I’ve followed assiduously are the Comsat Angels – their 1996 ‘My Minds’ Eye’ (available on Renascent) is an absolute classic.
Martin Westmacott
Thank you, Martin. For your kind words and for your contributions here. Both are certainly welcome.
Haha, I see what you mean about the dog, one can only hope that the RSPCA stepped in before so much as a sarangi was strummed or a vocal strangled. A very different kettle of fish to Soft Machine, eh?
It ably demonstrates the fine line between getting it right and getting it wrong, to the extent that Kaleidoscope (the British one that went on to become Fairfield Parlour) sound very similar to the Incredible String Band in places but are an absolute galaxy apart with regards to quality. I also have a liking for Dr. Strangely Strange – the second album, Heavy Petting, anyways – who also bear similarities to the dreaded String Band.
I think it’s like you say, the String Band stem from the same right-on, middle/upper class tofu mentality that’s still around today and just got lucky, whereas the other two I mentioned were made up of actual musicians with an ear for a tune and the ability to sidestep the more toe-curling of embarrassing lyrics.
Thanks for the heads up on the Comsat Angels – I’ll have to give them a look. The latest Shindig magazine (don’t know if you’re acquainted) came with a free CD showcasing twenty new bands playing the sort of stuff that would’ve been around in the in the late 60s/70s. I was pleasantly surprised by it. A few decent acts on there worthy of further investigation.
Thanks again, Martin.
Your review is really very silly. Robin Williamson is a fine musician and songwriter to this day, and that you can’t spot it does rather condemn you. Also, ‘middle class’ may be a pejorative term you use about today, probably incorrectly, given the rest of this review, but has very little relevance to, or had it in, 1968. Talking bollocks is always possible in blogland, but it isn’t compulsory.