Meic Stevens - Outlander

1970’s English language album from Welsh folk hero

For Meic Stevens, Outlander marked the point where the Welsh folk legend tried to get inland – or, rather, to mainstreamland. Released by Warner Bros in 1970, it featured him singing in English on record for the first time and was, in many ways, a moment of consolidation for Stevens, who had spent the years immediately prior to recording the album travelling Europe, raising a family and recording for small independent Welsh labels.

Picking up on European folk one moment and hanging out with British 60s psych luminaries Mighty Baby the next, Stevens approaches Outlander doing two things at once. He’s rooted in the “Welsh Bob Dylan” mould on some acoustic songs (though really Stevens was simply drawing on his own Celtic folk knowledge, as opposed to Dylan’s), and then going very Eastern psych with the likes of Yorric, something of a tribute to that most famous of skulls.

Stevens’ 10-piece band help to keep the flow going, picking up where their leader’s rough edges fray. Not just for the English language is this the most accessible of Stevens’ early works on CD, though Stevens turned his back on Warners, and thus this part of his career, almost immediately, travelling back to Wales to feel more at home back on the indies.

Water | 198

Reviewed by Jason Draper
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