Julie Tippetts - Sunset Glow 1975

Julie Driscoll's first solo album in five years was a major shock to anybody who remembered her only for her brief stint of pop-shaped glory at the end of the 1960s. Accompanied by a distinctly jazz-lite combo led by husband Keith Tippett, Driscoll only occasionally dips towards old territory, via the shimmering "Mind of Child" and the beautifully bluesy "Oceans and Sky." Elsewhere, the likes of "Lilies" and the title track see her stretching into deeply experimental/jazz fields, with her accompanists -- most notably the horn section of Mark Charig, Elton Dean, and Nick Evans -- driving many of the performances into the same kind of left-field territory as the earliest Robert Wyatt albums. This is no bad thing, of course, but does come as something of a shock if you're expecting anything else. Driscoll's lyric writing is also disappointing -- compared to some of the masterpieces wrought on Open, Streetnoise, and 1969, she seems definitely to be struggling with -- or, at least, not especially caring about -- the words she sang, even as the way she sings them remains staggeringly beautiful, heart-stoppingly evocative. In fact, little about Sunset Glow truly answers the long-standing calls for her to return to front-line action, and it would take another year, and a reunion with Brian Auger, before Driscoll genuinely returned to form. AMG.

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