Donovan Fairytale CD - Import

This 1965 debut album was a mix of protest and romantic angst which proved irresistable. This deluxe edition adds five EP tracks. The CD side features the complete album in stereo, and the DVD side features 5.1 surround sound, liner notes, and artist photos.

Personnel: Donovan Philip Leitch (vocals, guitar, banjo, harmonica); Shawn Phillips (12-string guitar); Danny Thompson (cello); Harold McNair (flute); Brian Locking (bass); Skip Alan (drums).
Producers: Terry Kennedy, Peter Eden, Geoff Stephens.
Originally released on Hickory (127). Includes original release liner notes by Ren Grevatt.
FAIRYTALE is a reissue of Donovan's second album from 1965 and includes the UNIVERSAL SOLDIER EP and two non-album B-sides.
Personnel: Donovan (vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonica); Shawn Phillips (electric guitar, 12-string guitar).
Producers include: Eden, Stephens, Terry Kennedy.
Sequel Records' followup to their CATCH THE WIND compilation, FAIRYTALE documents the era where Donovan Leitch was slowly turning from earnest folkie to pop oddball, though here he's still much more the former than the latter. Buffy Sainte Marie's "Universal Soldier" and his own "Colours," both heard here in two different versions, set the tone early on, but later in songs like "Sunny Goodge Street" and "The Summer Day Reflection Song," his SUNSHINE SUPERMAN-era twee-pop tendencies start to come to the fore.
Donovan's early records are mostly charming examples of mid-'60s folk rock--any Simon and Garfunkel fan, for example, will find FAIRYTALE interesting. The reissue includes a number of rare single sides.
Donovan's second album found the Scottish folkie in possession of his own voice, a style of earnest, occasionally mystical musings indebted neither to Woody Guthrie nor Bob Dylan. True, Fairytale's highlights -- "Sunny Goodge Street," "Jersey Thursday," and "The Summer Day Reflection Song" -- use a sense of impressionism pioneered by Dylan, but Donovan flipped Dylan's weariness on its head. His persona is the wistful hippie poet, continually moving on down the road, but never bitter about the past. The folkie "Colours," already a hit before the album's release, is also here (though without Donovan's harmonica). A few of his songs are inconsequential and tossed-off ("Oh Deed I Do," "Circus of Sour"), but a few of these ("Candy Man" especially) succeed too, thanks to Donovan's effervescent delivery. ~ John Bush
Sequel Records' followup to their CATCH THE WIND compilation, FAIRYTALE documents the era where Donovan Leitch was slowly turning from earnest folkie to pop oddball, though here he's still much more the former than the latter. Buffy Sainte Marie's "Universal Soldier" and his own "Colours," both heard here in two different versions, set the tone early on, but later in songs like "Sunny Goodge Street" and "The Summer Day Reflection Song," his SUNSHINE SUPERMAN-era twee-pop tendencies start to come to the fore.
Donovan's early records are mostly charming examples of mid-'60s folk rock--any Simon and Garfunkel fan, for example, will find FAIRYTALE interesting. The reissue includes a number of rare single sides.

Q (2/02, p.122) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...Confident, with the cinematic allusions of 'The Summer Day Reflection Song' and the surrealist word-pictures of 'Sunny Goodge Street' still sending shivers up the spine..."s