A stirring celebration of Mike and Lal Waterson’s great lost folk album gathered daughters, sons, cousins and uncles – plus an Arcade Fire star
evamping a cult masterpiece is a dangerous business, and Bright Phoebus – the 1972 album by siblings Mike and Lal Waterson – really is a masterpiece. Imagine the most severe voices in folk music pitched against lush, boozy, crushingly tender instrumentals. The songs have a gnarled lyricism, a concise and dreamy poetry. If you’ve never heard them, that’s probably because half of the original vinyl copies were pressed with the hole in the wrong place and it took until last summer for Bright Phoebus to be remastered and rereleased – largely thanks to the efforts of Lal’s daughter [ . . . ] More at: Bright Phoebus Revisited review – Watersons bring a cult classic back to life
