A hauntingly beautiful debut,
Message to a Harlequin
has
Tim Hollier
working in a restrained yet elegantly produced
folk-pop
mode, almost pre-
Raphaelite
in the manner of
Duncan Browne
's
Give Me Take You
.
John Cameron
's arrangements, far more ornate than his work during the same period for
Donovan
, sometimes bury
Hollier
's acoustic guitar and drench his solo singing voice in
choral
accompaniment. The songs themselves were probably strong enough to stand on their own a bit better, but the results are still eminently listenable, resembling a
folk
-based equivalent to the kind of highly produced
psychedelic
pop/rock
of the period. ~ Bruce Eder