Donovan

It is difficult to say why this album designed for children doesn't work any better than it does. Perhaps it's because everything here is so quaint, and quaintness is a distinctly adult notion, a close cousin to willful nostalgia, and neither trait is anything that most kids would even bother exploring. Mixing in older songs like "Mandolin Man and His Secret" and "Little Boy in Corduroy" with a handful of newer pieces (and what must be the 400th version of "Colours"), Donovan actually does here what he has really always done, and that is make a pleasant, at times even interesting, album for adults who want to feel like they're children again. There is certainly nothing wrong with that. Just don't try selling it to the kids, because they undoubtedly wouldn't sit still for it.

Heaven knows, the Scotsman born Donovan Leitch was ripe for ridicule, even when he was hitting the charts with regularity. He was the ultimate flower child, and his airier pronouncements made cynics want to tighten up those love beads around his neck. Listening to Troubadour, however, it's striking how versatile, melodic, and agreeable most of his material sounds decades after "Mellow Yellow" has faded into a jaundiced yellow. Clearly under the sway of Bob Dylan early on in his career, Donovan nevertheless was capable of directing his reverence into something as enchanting as "Catch the Wind." Amping up as the '60s progressed, he assembled a series of psychedelic-pop classics, including "Season of the Witch," the "Hey Jude"-like sing-along "Atlantis," and the uncharacteristically driving "Hurdy Gurdy Man" (the latter features three-quarters of what was to become Led Zeppelin providing stellar support). This two-disc anthology may be more Donovan than some desire, but the booklet, seven previously unreleased tracks, and expansive perspective it provides makes it a more-than-worthy overview for those who take their paisley folk-rock with a beatific smile.

An icon of flower power who emerged as a folksinger but later gained hits like "Sunshine Superman" with bright psychedelic pop. Upon his emergence during the mid-'60s, Donovan was anointed "Britain's answer to Bob Dylan," a facile but largely unfounded comparison which compromised the Scottish folk-pop troubadour's own unique vision. Where the thrust of Dylan's music remains its bleak introspection and bitter realism, Donovan fully embraced the wide-eyed optimism of the flower power movement, his ethereal, ornate songs radiating a mystical beauty and childlike wonder; for better or worse, his recordings remain quintessential artifacts of the psychedelic era, capturing the peace and love idealism of their time to perfection. The Very Best Of includes all of the Scottish folk rocker's biggest smashes. Features 'Mellow Yellow', 'Sunshine Superman', 'Hurdy Gurdy Man', 'Jennifer Juniper', 'Riki Tiki Tavi' & much more.

Mellow Yellow is actually more diverse in its sounds than Sunshine Superman, drawing on some of the same era's better follow-up material but also reaching back somewhat further for repertory. It was, as one could rightly guess, a by-product of the late-1966 hit title track, but the songs dated back in some instances as much as a year, to a point prior to Donovan's having made the leap from folk to pop artist. "Mellow Yellow" itself was cut after "Sunshine Superman" and boasted one of the earliest arrangements by John Paul Jones to achieve international recognition (although not without some resistance from Donovan himself), with its broad, biting brass sound…

This re-release of Sunshine Superman might well be titled "The Ultimate Experience," or "The Total Immersion Version" - expanded to 67 minutes, it contains a new 24-bit remastering of the U.S. version of the album (the U.K. version, though it contained Donovan's preferred cover art, was compromised in its content by its extended delay in release, into the following year, owing to legal wrangling of the artist's management and recording contracts in the U.K.), plus seven chronologically related bonus tracks, "Breezes of Patchulie," "Museum" (in an early, lighter-textured version than its officially released recording from the next album), "Superlungs" (in the first of three distinctly different renditions); the longer stereo mix of "Sunshine Superman," and four never-before-heard tracks - "The Land of Doesn't Have to Be" and demo versions of "Good Trip" and "House of Jansch"…