Solid Air

I’m shocked to share that I liked this. Mellow, mostly just a dude and his guitar. Stripped down songs are sometimes all you need at the end of a long day.

Первая половина на одном дыхании, далее как то грубо вышло

Like being growled at by a drunk man loitering in the back of a cave.

This was my first John Martyn album, bought for 50 cents in a delete bin as a random take a chance record. It is still my favorite of his catalog. The whole album is brilliant, in particular the title track which is about his friend and fellow fantastic musician Nick Drake and his struggles with depression. Martyn was a multiple threat - a phenomenal guitarist, fantastic vocalist and an incredible song writer. He moved effortlessly between genres and was great at all of them - folk, rock, reggae and jazz he mastered. Four albums in particular stand out (all from the 70s I believe) - Solid Air, One World, Grace and Danger and Sunday's Child. His ex-wife Beverly, an outstanding artist in her own right, died very recently. At that time I learned that Martyn deliberately destroyed her career, that he was jealous, abusive and manipulative. It saddened me deeply since he has been one of my very favorite artists since the 70s. I have no idea how someone who was obviously a horrible human being could create such beautiful music.

While this album is certainly *fine*, John and his fans seem to think it's much better than it is. Like a mumblier Nick Drake. 3.3/5 -> 3/5

I've never heard of John Martyn. Starting with the first song it kind of reminded me of Nick Drake. So when I later read the Wikipedia and it said the first song was dedicated to his friend Nick Drake, that did not surprise me :) Definitely folky - plus. "Plus" meaning songs like "I'd Rather Be The Devil" and "Dreams By The Sea" get a lot more funky and jammy and even psychedelic-ish. Wikipedia says he's adding elements of blues and jazz and psychedelia. I'm digging the live version of "I'd Rather Be The Devil". I like this one better than the studio version. Looks like the original release had 9 songs - so I'll score based on 9 songs and just substitute in the live version of that song. This was a good surprise - having never heard of this artist before. I ended up liking all of the songs except for "The Man in The Station" and "Easy Blues" Liked songs on Spotify: 7/9 Rating: 4/5

Plenty to love here

This was my shit man. Perfect blend of folk and jazz for a guy like me. This is who Dispatch think they are.

Not bad.

Nearly fell asleep listening to this.

Interesting folk music here with a touch of jazz elements. Was pretty suprised by this as I thought it would be a straight forward folk album after reading that he was friends with the late Nick Drake. May have to revisit this one.

This had a nice and cool mellow sort of sound, but I just didn’t like the way he sings

Parece que tinha um potencial, mas não alcançou pra mim... Parece meio vazio, não sei. Não entendi o que rolou, mas não me animou.

I like her voice and some of the arrangements but it’s not for me

2.6

8/10 Being aware of John Martyn, but not vastly familiar with his work, this was an intriguing album to review. I know that he was a friend and contemporary on the folk scene with Nick Drake, and also had interest in sonic experimentation, particularly with the use of delay. He even worked with Lee “Scratch” Perry, later in his career. First impressions of this record were pretty strong. The clarity of the guitar work sent against the slightly more woody bass work fantastically in tandem and, while I wasn’t necessarily completely sold on the vocal style at first, I did warm to it fairly quickly. There’s an indistinct, but melodically aware lilt to the delivery and the dynamic he uses to drift between slurred and slightly more precise pronunciation works well as a narrative device within a song. As the album progressed, things progressed into a much broader range of styles and tones than I was expecting, from a brighter, more blues-folk effort like Over The Hill to the darker sonic experimentation of I’d Rather Be The Devil. He touches on aspects of soul, jazz and even funk in various places across the record, with a strong approach to rhythm and some absolutely killer grooves scattered throughout. While there is typically a somewhat freeform edge to the structure of a lot of these songs, the melodic centrepieces to a lot of the songs are actually very strong, and while there is a lot of roaming and dancing around, it pretty much always felt like there was a central melodic point around which the rest of the work danced. Martyn also uses his voice in a really interesting way, happy to work with grit and an almost drunken slur in places, but working with much more precise diction and tonality in others, working to give each song and section what it needs while developing an interesting directionality to the performances. There’s some fantastic instrumental performances on here too, from the acoustic bass work of Danny Thompson to the gorgeous sax work of Tony Coe on Dreams By The Sea and some lush pieces of electric piano from John "Rabbit" Bundrick. It rarely feels overdone, and the guest instrumentalists are sparingly used, which if anything makes them all the more effective when they do appear. I do feel like the through line of the album itself is a tiny bit jumbled, due to the amount of styles that Martyn touches on, and he could have actually spent a bit more time weaving the record into a slightly longer but more coherent selection, but other than that, this was a great listen, and has the feel of a record that might grow on me even more over time. Solid Air - The blended tones of the guitar and bass here are lovely. The production is nice and airy, and the slurred, slightly indistinct delivery of the vocal works incredibly well, as Martyn almost drifts in and out of focus through slight variations in his diction. It manages to be both somewhat freeform and jazzy, while circling around a strong and coherent centre. Some of the melodic work is incredibly pretty, and is very well supported by the slowly increasing orchestration. A really impressive start. Over The Hill - And now the tone brightens, and we get some very well executed and deft guitar playing. The mandolin adds some great texture too, and the central melodic motif is simple, but very effective. It’s a nice stylistic marriage of folk and blues with loads of rhythmic movement dancing around beneath the more laid back melody. Don't Want To Know - This is almost dancing on the edges of soul. Again, the guitar performance is very strong, particularly from a rhythmic point of view. When the band kicks in, the soulful edge comes even more to the fore. The slightly slurred vocal delivery is delivered with a beautiful woody tone. There’s great groove to this, and the only thing that’s slightly disappointing is that it isn’t developed into something a little longer. I'd Rather Be The Devil - Oooh, this is sonically very interesting. It’s a reworking of a Skip James song, and the depth and weight of the production is fascinating and engaging. There’s a darkness to it, and the pulsing and throbbing grooves give it a very cool dynamic. Martyn dips back towards the vocal style employed on Solid Air in moments, but also sings with more clarity elsewhere. There’s some excellent instrumental soloing work, and the gritty tones paint a great tonal picture.It drifts perhaps a little too far towards inertia in the middle, but i think the sonic experimentation is still great and, when considered as a side closer, rather than a track in the middle of an album, it probably works a little better. Go Down Easy - This reminds me a little of the work that Joni Mitchell would later approach on Hejira. It’s slightly roaming, but the circling of the main motif keeps it focused and centred. The soaring and diving bass work is lovely and the rich tones of all three parts are incredibly well balanced. It’s quite subtle, but executed beautifully with a great melodic ear. Dreams By The Sea - And now he almost drifts toward funk and some of this work doesn’t feel a million miles away from Curtis Mayfield’s work on Super Fly. It’s got great grooves, and some solid funky textures, especially from the electric piano and wah-wah guitar. The vocal delivery has just the right amount of grit and slur to it to make it full of attitude. The sax solo is fantastic too. It’s a proper blend of solid grooves and funky lines. Super cool. May You Never - It’s another stylistic switch up back into something more folksy and singer-songwriter coded. The melodic work continues to be subtle but delightful and Martyn’s vocal is understated, while working as a perfect foil for the songwriting and guitar playing. There’s a great rhythmic pulse to this and the dynamic and melodic subtleties are excellent. A beautiful piece of work. The Man In The Station - He alternates really nicely between tracks with different vibes without things ever becoming particularly jarring. This is a rockier effort with some nice jazzy elements, though it feels a bit less melodically crisp and focused than the better tracks on the album. There are some really well executed dynamic peaks, but in general, I’d say it doesn’t necessarily stick with those fuller moments for long enough, so feels a touch stop/start. The Easy Blues - Now this is more like it. The almost frantic guitar and bass work dance around each other beautifully and Martyn’s gritty blues vocal works as a perfect balance against the staccato work from the instrumental parts. It’s gorgeous stuff. And then the last minute of the track changes completely into a jazz blues track, which doesn’t work nearly as well for me. It looks like they actually split these tracks on later releases, but I always go with the original track list, so let’s just call it a weird shift and be done with it, shall we?

Це суттєво краще за інший альбом в списку. Хороші пісні, подобається джеззі атмосфера, яка тут присутня багато де. Мені був вокал дуже дивний на тому альбомі, а тут взагалі нуль питань, гарні виконання. Я не проти мати такий альбом на платівці, бо є потенціал щоб його вмикати під спокійний настрій

Коли минулого разу випав альбом Джона Мартіна, то я якраз помилково послухав спочатку solid air і це було прям відкриття для мене. А потім я послухав той альбом що насправді випав і він взагалі мені не сподобався, особливо вокал чомусь. Повертаючись до solid air, то я прям часто слухаю його останнім часом, дуже подобаються багато пісень і якась така трохи меланхолійна атмосфера.

Did not like the title track whatsoever and I was dreading the rest of the album. It picked up a bit afterwards with Over The Hill but the stand out for me was I’d Rather Be The Devil (Devil Got My Woman), an absolute cracker of a track. The rest of the album was decent enough but didn’t hit that same height.

The only reason "Solid Air" is on the list is so it can fill a space. I can hear the Nick Moon influence on the gentler songs. My favourite song on "Solid Air" is "I'd Rather Be the Devil". It's way more interesting than the other tracks on "Solid Air". In a perfect world, the album would've sounded like "I'd Rather Be the Devil". 3 stars for "Solid Air".

Will listen again.

My one word review of Solid Air: Mumblebore.

I swore the falling in love song was gonna be on here. This a four cuz it amused me enough

This would normally be my bread and butter but this particular 70s singer songwriter didn’t do anything for me. It reminded me of other artists, in particular Nick Drake, but perhaps less interesting, though the instrumentation was sublime. Half way through it hit me. It’s the Blues rearing its ugly head. Not a fan.

Gorgeous album, beautiful acoustic guitar playing, really nice voice. A lot of the backing musicians are from Fairport Convention. Not really a bad song on the album. Apparently the title track was written as a dedication to his friend, Nick Drake, who took his own life 18 months later. Best songs: Over the Hill All of side 2 4.5

Number: 270 Familiarity: Aware (2) Rating: 3 Before: ======= Hm, my second folkish album in a row. I had Devendra Banhart yesterday which I ended up giving a 4, but just barely. And like Mr. Banhart, I'm a little familiar Mr. Martyn. I think there is a song or two on his One World album that I like but don't think I'm familiar with this album. After : ======= On a song by song basis it came to 2.50 but accounting for song lengths it comes to 2.44. I think I'll give it a 3 as most of the album was not an unpleasant experience and it was a little interesting in places.

Great vibes. Sounds lovely at night. Only slightly below absolute classic level.

For better or worse this is always going to be EXACTLY my type of shit

Belíssimo disco. Fluído, de audição agradável com suas peças intimistas, mas com ritmo e pulsação encantadores.

A nice listen. Probably won't seek it out, but won't mind hearing it if it comes on.

Some cool songs, but overall I'm fine w/ having listened to it only once

It was a somber folksy album, I really liked it and I loved the playlist it generated afterwards.

I can't tell what I think of this. I'm leaning towards not loving it. The longer it goes, the more I feel that way. I bet Nick Cave loves this album. I still don't know. It's hard to get a read on this. Iron and Wine loves this album too. I'd Rather Be The Devil (Devil Got My Woman) is the best track on the album. INXS probably loved it.

1973, Folk Rock/Jazz. It's a nice album. Nothing to get too excited about though Favorite track: Solid Air 3.75 / 5

Solid Air by John Martyn is already in my "collection" but I only ever listened to it once and never got to give it some more attention so here's a great chance to go through the album again. I have read some reviews complaining about his mumbled vocals and slurred speech at times and while thats true I have to say it didn't bother me at all. His style fits to the slow quiet songs and in the more energetic songs he shows that he possesses quite a powerful voice. John Martyn also possesses a great variety of musical styles in his arsenal which is evident all across the record. There are the pure folk songs but then influences of jazz, blues, funk and even I think psychedelic rock come to show which results in a good diverse listening experiences that takes you to absolute relaxation. The titletrack is dedicated to Martyns fellow folk singer songwriter friend Nick Drake of whom I expect one or two albums on this list as well and I respect that a lot. Solid Air for sure is an album for the smoke enjoyers out there. It's soothing it's relaxing and just overall perfect to chill out to. I will revisit this on more than one good evening knowing how good it is now. 4,0/5

I'd heard bits before but never a whole album by him. It's nice but the vocal style and the strong jazz elements don't do much for me personally.

Jeg er ikke enig i at det lyder forud for sin tid, jeg synes det lyder super 70'er agtigt. Men på den fede måde

Virkelig skøn plade, lyder ca 20 år forud for sin tid

Super chill and beautiful acoustic start, turns more noisy and electronic towards the end. Great record!

I enjoyed this, but it kind of lost points when a Smog track auto played at the end and I was like, this is better. Makes sense that the first track was written for Nick Drake and damn this dude loves to sing about drugs, but especially coke.

More fun listen over One World. A nice mixture of jazz and 70s folk. Smooth at times but gets kind of intense in a couple moments. Somewhere across between mellow, virtuosity, and a decent dose of quirky.

I spent so much time thinking of a way to call this boring that I forgot that I was even listening to it.

A smooth listen for a late-night drive. No idea what any of the lyrics are. Martyn’s largely indecipherable voice acts more like another instrument than a messenger. I was once asked by a mate to go to a John Martyn gig. I declined. Probably a good decision, as I may not have stayed awake.

Gillar!

Nope

Until it went into blues style it was pleasant enough.

3.5 solid and interesting

a surprise fav? it was supes chill to listen to while studying and reminded me of van morrison a bit

Some good here, but not enough for me to actively like it.

meh

Ved ikke, ikke helt oppe at ringe over denne. OK, lyttede måske ikke helt ordentligt efter....

Aldrig hørt om ham, men jeg kunne egentlig godt lide det. Instrumenteringen er lækker og nærmest taktil, men jeg veksler lidt i min opfattelse af hans vokal. Der er noget ved den, der tenderer til noget irriterende, men det er samtidig så listenable, at det er svært at blive rigtigt irriteret. Godt album 3.8

solid album. 5 stars f*ck the haters

Not for me

I don't know what this is, but it is pretty awful.

bit boring to my taste

Folksy psychedelic blues... A lot of interesting moments

I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. His voice sounded a bit like if steely dan made folk music and mumbled more. But it was a soothing album, nice and relaxing

Really warm sound. Like the guitar and the way the vocals sit in it.

just mumbled badness

What the actual fuck am I listening to?

Some nice aspects but his vocals are awful just mumbles and slurs its hard to comprehend also some aspects just became drivel. I liked the first track the guitar was nice folk in a way but it just went downhill afterwards

Ok

gentle blues, slight bluegrass edge occasionally, gentle jazziness too. not my bag

Cool cover, cool grooves, interesting instrumentation and a smooth voice. Missing something for a 5, but a very strong 4.

Beautiful. Such an awesome quiet atmosphere throughout. I love the signature harmony style of that kind of jazzy minor blues thing. The dubby echoplex stuff is beautiful too. He's a master of the simple folk style stuff too though and may you never is incredible. I get how the voice might be an acquired taste for some - for me it just feeds that atmosphere nicely. Danny Thompsons contribution on bass is huge.

Folk, Jazz, Blues, alittle funky, Rock, mildly psychedelic, what’s not to like about this album?! It’s just got so much going on that’s all so perfectly executed. I’ll admit when I first started the album I thought the vocals were very dramatic and almost silly during the opening track. Then it leads into over the hill which is a super endearing folk song that has absolutely beautiful instrumentals and especially guitar playing. There’s a few songs that didn’t really grab me that were alittle too slow for me to be a song that I saved. But then there’s “I’d rather be the devil” which is psychedelic and atmospheric. Loved that song. Then there’s like the big funky rock song “dreams by the sea” which was probably my favorite song on the album (which makes sense cause the loudest and funkiest song on the album). I also liked the folksy blues song “the man in the station”, and then the album ends with two fairly short blues songs. The only thing stopping this album from being a perfect 5 is just that there were a few songs too slow for me to truly love, but the album as a whole I really did love a lot. And while it might’ve been just short of a 5 it’s definitely getting added to my want list for my collection cause I feel that need to own the album.

More like a 3.75. But I rounded up.

Kände att det kunde vara något häftigt i början men sen tappade det

Rätt trevligt men vaknade aldrig riktigt till.

Trevligt och fint.

It’s like The Who have met The Doors and The Rolling Stones in a jazz bar owned by a bunch of folk and blues legends where everyone got high on their preferred substance and wrote an album. I don’t think I have ever heard of John Martyn before this album popping up as my daily listen here, and I feel I wouldn’t have appreciated it as much if it wasn’t for the music I’ve discovered over the last two months. This record is a bit all over the place, a chilled out mix of quite everything that was happening in popular music in the early 70s. It’s folksy, but there’s a lot of jazz bass and some saxophone bits, a lot of mumbling that would fit in blues records, and some rock ’n roll energy that exudes the best from The Stooges. What was particularly fascinating were the acoustic guitar bits that somehow fit with the psychedelic sensibility of so many of the songs. Surprisingly, this is just the type of chaos I appear to love.

Chill. Not like the other one. More chill.

Man, there was absolutely nothing here to write home about

No löytyihän tästä Deluxe versio apple music palvelustakin. Tunnelmallista myhäilyä tämä olikin.

Fine record that feels a bit slow but has amazing talent

I’ve tried to love this album several times over the years and it has a few beautiful songs but the wankery level is just a bit too high overall

i have no idea what this man just said to me

Full of beautiful lullabies, cant believe I've never heard of him before - is defo being added to the regular rotation

Had never heard of or listened to this but it's a 'yay' from me.

Didn't really pull up any trees for me but contained a few nice songs.

Really good, a nice discovery

⭐⭐⭐⭐ — daytime ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ — late at night There is a strange mismatch at the heart of Solid Air. John Martyn keeps writing songs about making the world smaller, while making music that seems determined to remove every boundary it encounters. Again and again, he is drawn towards the cocoon: home, friendship, intimacy, retreat, the possibility of shutting out complexity and being left alone. “Don’t Want to Know” makes the impulse unusually explicit. “The Man in the Station” first allows Martyn to observe himself from a distance, then draws the perspective back inside, towards the familiar desire for somewhere simpler to inhabit. Even “Over the Hill”, ostensibly a cheerful journey home to his wife and babies, casually places that domestic yearning alongside cocaine and disgrace. He knows all these things about himself. What is striking is how little need he seems to feel to reconcile them. That matters because the music behaves quite differently. Solid Air is constantly opening doors. The title track establishes the method. Martyn and Danny Thompson seem to provide whatever architecture there is, while everything around them smears into a wonderfully indistinct whole. Saxophone, vibes, guitar and voice bleed across one another. Martyn’s singing belongs in that instrumental conversation: his delivery is blues, heavily inflected by jazz, capable of stuttering through a series of clipped figures before smearing the next phrase almost beyond language. Nina Simone kept coming to mind, particularly in the freedom with which the written line is treated. “Funky, not folky”, Martyn called himself. Quite. That description becomes emphatic on “I’d Rather Be the Devil”. Martyn takes Skip James and, using predominantly acoustic means, finds something startlingly modern inside the blues. The Echoplex becomes a rhythmic device. Repetition becomes groove; groove becomes trance. There is a clear route from here to the Verve turning repetition into enormous psychedelic weight on “The Rolling People”, and another towards the Edge discovering how delay could generate rhythm. Then Martyn and his musicians simply refuse to stop exploring. The latter part of “I’d Rather Be the Devil” becomes a long, deconstructed improvisation in which Danny Thompson moves between plucked and bowed bass with extraordinary sensitivity. By the final minute, so much has happened that the beginning of the song is difficult to recall. This is where Martyn’s love of jazz seems most fundamental. He isn’t borrowing a few jazz colours. He is allowing musicians to behave like jazz musicians: establish a structure, inhabit it, pull it apart and discover how far it will stretch. That happens throughout Solid Air. Songs finish when they are ready, not when convention suggests they have completed their allotted business. “Don’t Want to Know” opens into a communal coda. The dark, paranoid “Dreams by the Sea” sits on an irresistible funk groove before being given room to breathe beyond the lyric. Even the astonishingly picked “The Easy Blues” eventually changes its mind about what song it is, dissolving into “Gentle Blues” and an eerie synthesised texture at the very end of the album. So the contradiction keeps returning. The words seek insulation; the performances seek possibility. Martyn wants to reduce the world to manageable proportions while the musicians around him — and Martyn himself — keep discovering more space inside the music. There is a darker implication to that desire for enclosure. Martyn’s heavy drinking and Beverley Martyn’s account of abuse make it impossible for me to hear his recurring ideal of the cocoon as uncomplicatedly cosy. Isolation can be extremely comfortable for the person whose behaviour makes engagement with the outside world difficult. It can be a very different experience for the person enclosed with them. Solid Air doesn’t secretly confess all this, and I don’t need it to. It is enough that the songs repeatedly return to retreat, avoidance and domestic sanctuary while Martyn’s biography tells us that sanctuary was considerably more complicated than it sounds. And then he writes “May You Never”. It is so generous that any neat theory of Martyn immediately becomes inadequate: a good-natured blessing for the people close to him, with something of an informal Celtic benediction about it. May you have friendship; may somebody be there when you need them; may life be kind. After all the extraordinary collaborative playing, everybody else disappears and Martyn gives us the song alone. It is a virtuoso performance disguised as something effortless and affectionate. The complicated man was perfectly capable of tenderness. The album is better for refusing to make those things easy to reconcile. Perhaps that is why Solid Air changes after dark. In daylight, I hear an excellent four-star album and can admire the phenomenal musicianship. Late at night its smears, silences, repetitions and refusal to hurry become the environment rather than things I am observing from outside. The man keeps looking for a cocoon. The music won’t stay inside it.

this was really good

After a while, I couldn’t help but feel tired of every song. Not much to say

Wow, I've been reading about John Martyn for years but never really listened to one of his albums and, gotta say, this did nothing for me. I'm not sure what I was expecting but this sounded like Dave Matthews to me - something in the jam world stripped down to guitar. It might grow on me (if I let it!)

3.5

2.5 great highs and mediocre lows. Title track is really the keeper

Didn't resonate with me.

Solid Air Don't Want to Know

Beautiful mix of genres

Marko - 2.5 Sara - 4

Struggled with this album. 2 stars for me.

This album came to my attention as a result of Guy Garvey playing Solid Air regularly on his Radio 6 show as he still does. Bought it on strength of that. Needs a lot of attention to understand it as it is very challenging and I’m sure a casual listener would not like it. 4/5 5/9/26

Decent background music, kind of boring

Unremarkable I suppose

Never heard of this artist and won't remember this album at all.

There are quite a few elements here that don’t usually float my boat, but I really liked it.

I respect this album. It's misplaced in the British folk category. It has some really cool guitar and other jazzy instrumentation. I can't fully get behind it because I don't love his slurry, crooner vocals.

sounds current