Additional information
Personnel: Mike Snow (piano, organ). Liner Note Authors: Richard Morton Jack; Meic Stevens. Arranger: Meic Stevens. The first volume of this series, Rain in the Leaves: The EPs, Vol. 1, gathered tracks that mostly appeared on rare 1967-1970 EPs on which Meic Stevens sang in Welsh. It's the same deal for this entirely Welsh-sung follow-up compilation, with a dozen of the songs taken from scarce EPs originally issued in 1970 and 1971; a couple others from a rare 1970 single; four others from an unreleased 1970 EP; and a couple others from the 1970 compilation LP Disc a Dawn. While some collectors revere this material, and Sunbeam has done a great service by making such ultra-rare recordings easily available with excellent packaging, it's debatable as to whether Stevens would have stood out as much as he did if he didn't cut much of his material in Welsh. It's true the language barrier makes his merits more challenging to evaluate for non-Welsh speakers, but he's a rather average early-'70s folk-rock singer/songwriter whose slightly husky vocal intensity and forceful guitar strumming are more impressive than his compositional talents. Perhaps he was over-stretched by his prolific recording schedule at the time (which also saw him issue English-language recordings), but there are also some fairly derivative numbers here. "Rhywbeth Gwell i Ddod" can't fail to recall early Bob Dylan's gentlest material (especially in the harmonica work); "Sachliain a Lludw" and "Jam Poeth" are generic blues-rock; "Dwyn y Lein" sounds like a ragged 1965 Dylan outtake with shades of "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"; and "Roedd Gennyf i Gariad" is melodically very similar to Pentangle's "Once I Had a Sweetheart." He's better when he backs off a little on the intensity and reaches for more tender folk balladeering, and at those points his work will appeal to early Donovan fans who don't mind that style being sung and played with a coarser tone. ~ Richie Unterberger
