Judy Dyble

Earth Is Sleeping

Sixties folk legend continues to enjoy her Indian summer.

Judy Dyble has been making up for lost time over the past 10 years or so, having spent most of the previous three decades in selfimposed exile from the music business while raising children and working as a librarian.

Earth Is Sleeping builds on the momentum of last year’s psychfolk collaboration with Andy Lewis, Summer Dancing, and is the latest in a welcome string of comeback albums. Co-written with a bunch of admirers that includes ex-Counting Crows member Matt Malley and sometime Kiss guitarist Michael Raphael, it displays all the hallmarks of Dyble’s work: the bell-pure voice, crisp enunciation and gently drifting folk songs with a deceptively sturdy core.

What’s remarkable is how well her singing has survived the ravages of time. Velvet To One stands up well against its 1970 version (originally recorded during her time with Trader Horne, following Dyble’s stints with Fairport Convention and the pre-King Crimson set-up of

Giles, Giles And Fripp) without sacrificing any of its rapturous wonder. The arrangements are simple throughout, decorating her voice in sombre piano, minimal strings and precise guitar, lending the songs an intimacy in keeping with the over-arching theme of a lifetime’s reflection and the roll of the seasons.