Spriguns - Revel Weird and Wild
Spriguns - Time Will Pass
These Spriguns albums were at least five years too late, resembling in spirit and style early Fairport Convention, Fotheringay and Sandy Denny. There’s something of a languor to Revel almost as if the band couldn’t get behind their own songs. Part of it is that they don’t use a similar formula to a lot of other folk rockers where the pace of the album is mixed up by the presence of reels or other upbeat pieces. Spriguns are mostly about ballads and few of them rise above mediocrity. Time Will Pass, on the other hand, is a little more interesting with the band adding strings and other instrumentation to shake things up a bit. There’s still something of a dreamy melancholy going on here, but the instrumental sections mix it up a little and make the results a bit more palatable. Overall, Spriguns, at least during their second phase (I believe the band was originally Spriguns of Tolgus), were something of a minor blip on the folkrock radar, something best left to serious fans of the genre, others should start with Fairport and the like. I don’t feel the need to hang onto them.