One of our favorite tracks from The Numero Group's excellent Wayfaring Strangers: Ladies From The Canyon compilation was "Cricket" by Collie Ryan. A hippie devotee of Theosophy, Ryan recorded three lovely private press records in the early seventies that featured her stunning artwork and songs that subtly touched on mystical and Native American themes. Her high-pitch bird-like vocals, sheathed in reverb, and complex guitar arrangements fall heavier on the Linda Perhacs side of the Joni Mitchell coin than say, someone like Judee Sill, who also dealt with mystical themes but was more tied to a commercially viable singer-songwriter scene. The Hour is Now is a vinyl-only "best of" of sorts that combines tracks from all three records (yet mysteriously no "Cricket"...) and will save the less diehard fans from shelling out a couple of hundred dollars for the originals. The analog mastering was even supervised by none other than by J. D. Emmanuel! Beautiful stuff!!!
01 The giving tree 02 Bye baby blackbird 03 Lark flies 04 Prairie day lady 05 Indian harvest 06 Walk upon the land 07 Watching the grain growing 08 Owl of winter fortnite 09 Nothing but changing 10 Chalice of light 11 The hour is now 12 Star bright (song of silence)