Give Me Take You

Duncan Browne's melancholy first album, Give Me Take You -- released on music impresario Andrew Loog Oldham's Immediate label in 1968 -- is one wonderfully tender album. Many who only discovered it well after its original release compare its dulcet introspective tone to Nick Drake's albums. It does fall into a similar English folk vein, though Browne's arrangements are, on the whole, more Baroque, giving the album a semi-classical, regal feel. Browne charted his own classical arrangements and wrote out vocal charts for a choir, but turned to his art school friend David Bretton for song lyrics. It's Bretton's lovely Pre-Raphaelite style phrases, used here in the guise of lyrical content, that fans of this album often react strongly to, one way or another. True, there's a youthful innocence and melancholy that comes off as somewhat naïve sounding, mawkish, and awkward in our modern age -- "Better a tear of truth than smiling lies" is one example -- but this is a minor quibble. Immediate issued only one single from the album, "On the Bombsite," but it failed to connect with listeners. At the time of its release, in August of 1968, Oldham's Immediate Records was reportedly falling apart. He was in financial ruin and reportedly cut the sessions short to save money. Apart from one short-lived Canadian LP reissue in the mid-'70s (which was notable for reproducing the cover art against a silver background), it didn't show up again until 1991, when Sony Music Special Products in America, having licensed the Immediate catalog, reissued the basic album on CD (mastered, it must be conceded, from three vinyl sources, due to a master tape that couldn't be located). In 2000, it was reissued once more on compact disc, by the U.K.-based Castle imprint, this time with five bonus tracks dating from Browne's early-'70s sessions when he was recording for the Bell label. The 2009 reissue of Give Me Take You by Cherry Red's Grapefruit label adds ten tracks from the actual Immediate vaults, demos and rehearsals of "On the Bombsite," "Give Me Take You," "Ninepence Worth of Walking," "I Was, You Weren't," and "The Death of Neil"; and the mono single versions of "Alfred Bell" and "Bombsite"; additionally, there is one lost, never-finished song from the same sessions, "The Cherry Blossom Fool," featuring Browne and his guitar, in a low-keyed performance of a piece as hauntingly beautiful and melancholy as the rest of the record; and, as a special bonus, "Here and Now" by Browne's original trio, Lorel. Most of the demos and rehearsals differ in nuance and emphasis, more than in any substantive way, and, of course, have no choruses, handclaps, reverb, or other embellishments. "Give Me Take You" and "I Was You Weren't" are funny, however, thanks to the ill-advised effort to work them out with a drum kit in the arrangement -- "Give Me Take You," in particular, sounds as though someone was thinking of the Beatles song "Why Don't We Do It in the Road" while pounding out the rhythm; but "I Was You Weren't" does give listeners the chance to hear David Bretton's harmony part more clearly, and one wonders why he never pursued a singing career. "The Death of Neil," without any embellishment, is also a treat, just Browne and his guitar, and more than ever it sounds like the potential basis for a screenplay. The Lorel track, the earliest extant recording of any of Browne's music, fits in reasonably well with this album -- the lyrics aren't as introspective as Bretton's, and the music itself is more extrovert and pop-oriented, but one can definitely tell that it was a product of 1967 and the U.K. psychedelic boom, with its trippy choruses and tone of gentle optimism. The annotation by David Wells, apart from one error about the album's reissue history, is thorough and detailed, and the sound is, overall -- apart from the inevitable technical flaws in the demos and rehearsals -- superior to all prior re-releases of this record. ~ Bryan Thomas & Bruce Eder|