"These Trails": a lost classic of unique beauty Jan 31 '09    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet The Bottom Line These Trails is a hard-to-find but unique album of wonderfully childlike nature-based folk storytelling and touching acoustic guitars. I first heard of Hawaiian folk trio These Trails' 1973 self-titled album when it was mentioned in a review of Linda Perhacs' (equally brilliant) Parallelograms from a few years beforehand. These Trails was and is a very hard record to find and it was a surprise that I could find it in CD form on eBay. Now-deceased singer Margaret Morgan had known long-time traditional Hawaiian musician Patrick Cockett since the late 1950s, but according to a 2005 interview Cockett did not realise Morgan's musical talent until ten years later when he was moving from traditional Hawaiian music into more contemporary rock-influenced material under the influence of the psychedelic movement of the late 1960s. With the movement of Uruguay-born instrumentalist Carlos Padeiro, who had his own traditiona of folk music from the fishing culture of South America, the three and David Choy began to hang out in the hills near Honolulu to write and practice. The material on These Trails reflects the experience of most members with acoustic stringed instruments, including not only guitars but also the ukulele, and dulcimer. Also inportant was Cockett's experience with traditional Hawaiian "slack key" guitar tunings. Nonetheless, the texture is totally different from anything else within the psychedelic folk scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The opening track, "These Trails", is a beautiful, extremely short and simple tale of sucessful struggle against the difficult forces of nature, with Margaret Morgan's utterly childlike vocals being the perfect accompaniment to the dense, yet sharp sound. However, the next piece, "Our House in Hanalei", is much more stunning still, with Margaret Morgan's lyrics representing the traditional life of people on the Hawaiian island far better than the average music listener could ever imagine. The bouncy percussion distinguishes this track from its predecessor, yet it comes together in a manner that can only be described as wonderfully organic. At times, too, Morgan's childlike lyrics are quite funny. The guitar too, in a slack-key tuning, is brilliantly played. "Of Broken Links" opens with a quiet chant and is dominated by beautiful slow strings. Morgan's lyric is a paen to the power of music and the dreams it can produce. This is the best-known track on These Trails owing to its inclusion on the recent compilation Folk Is a Four-Letter Word, but it is not perfectly representative of the album. "El Rey Pescador" shows the Latin influence on the album and features Padeiro doing most of the singing, but musically it is a similarly simple acoustic folk number. The fifth track, "Psyche I/Share Your Water" is a two-part piece beginning with a twinkling, soft instrumental number whose range of moods is very difficult to hear unless one listens extremelyly carefully, when its variation from dark quiet to upbeat is heard. The second part, "Share Your Water" is a touching piece with a remarkably resonant message of environmental care. When Margaret Morgan sings "must shere her [the sea's] identity" an aware listener's identification with the fragility and difficulties of nature ought to grow remarkably. "Hello Lou" is a dark, fragile love song in which the shimmering textures stay in the background in a way that truly soothes the listener: a perfect song to hear when one wants to relax. "Rusty's House/Los in Space" is the second medley on the album. "Rusty's House" is a tale of the beauty of being hospitable and the happiness that results: the music is catchy and upbeat but loses nothing compared to the first side. "Los in Space" is more idiosyncratic and music slower. In fact, its tone is much more mysterious than the earthy, everyday tales that dominate the rest of These Trails, but it is enchanting. "Psyche II" is almost a reprise of "Psyche I", though it is a little softer, like capturing nature's darker mood. "Sowed a Seed", the ninth track, is probably the best on the whole album. Morgan's voice is at its most childlike and the tale of crops failing in the sterile soils so common in warm climates ("the soil I chose proved/stale/Sand frozen fragment/Prevail") really is so easy to relate to for someone like myself faced with similar problems in Australia. The music, too, has remarkable qualities, being denser than any other track and yet moving and changing mood with the most total freedom. "Rapt Attention", on which Cockett again used a slack-key tuning, despicts the beauty of the rise and fall of the sea and likens it to the attarction between two lovers. Margaret Morgan's voice is a childlike whisper that is really catchy yet does not become boring after repeated listens. Penultimate track "Waipoo" is in the vein of "Hello Lou" and "Of Broken Links" with its soft strings, but here the sounds of nature are at their most beautiful and precise. Almost every lyric here describes the beauty of the Hawaiian landscape from the mountains to the fields to the coast to teh birds. Closer "Garden Botanum" goes even further in its description of the Hawaiian Islands' floral beauty with touching descriptions of flowers and leaves. The unique textures established throughout These Trails are made into sounds almost as stunning as on "Sowed A Seed", especially with teh dulcimers. All in all, These Trails has proved a really rare find with its beautiful, childlike themes of nature that ranges from pure beauty to the surmounting of the difficulties nature can pose for people. The music, too, shows a wonderful range of unique textures on guitar and other stringed instruments, whilst the soft voice of Margaret Morgan is the perfect complement. There have been very few one-off albums of this quality, and if you can find it you are very lucky indeed.

Write the first comment on this review!

Write an essay on this topic.