Review: Audiophile Vinyl Reissue of Donovan's 'The Hurdy Gurdy Man'

The press loved to cop out and make trite Dylan comparisons, but Donovan was always a much more eclectic creature than that. Even during his early "folkie" days he was playing with jazz on things like "Sunny Goodge Street" that could never be mistaken for Bob. And once he remade himself as a sort of psychedelic-pop mystic, his albums started taking on unique and cohesive flavors quite unlike his initial solo acoustic guitar dominated albums. With his break through, Sunshine Superman, he crafted a fine and florid folk-raga record that made more extensive use of the sitar than The Beatles ever did. With "Mellow Yellow" he committed to coffee-house jazz for much of the record, and with A Gift from a Flower to a Garden, he created a children's record hippie parents surely stomached better than they would The Best of Burl Ives. 

For his sixth album, Donovan threw cohesiveness into the river and drew on all the sounds that had defined his previous platters. There was a little drony exoticism, a little jazz, a little folk for little folks, and with two of his finest hits, a little pastoral balladry and a meaty enough slab of acid rock that it has often been mistakenly characterized as a sort of Led Zeppelin-audition-session. It wasn't—only John Paul Jones played on "Hurdy Gurdy Man"—but it was still all kinds of awesome.

Released the same year The Beatles made a veritable encyclopedia of pop styles, The Hurdy Gurdy Man similarly succeeded because its songs are so disparate and because each one is of such high quality. So it is fitting that it is now being subjected to a vinyl reissue from a label that prides itself on high-quality audiophile releases. According to Impex Records' publicity material, its reissue boasts all-analog mastering "from 1 to 1 copy of the US analog master tape," courtesy of Chris Bellman and Bernie Grundman. 

That sounds great, considering that together and/or Bellman and Grundman were responsible for such great sounding mastering jobs as the 2013 pressing of Nirvana's Nevermind, Kate Bush's 2018 reissues on her Fish People label, UMe's double-LP 45 RPM reissues by The Band, and last year's superb edition of John Cale's Paris 1919 on Domino Records. They also did The Beach Boys's Feel Flows box set, which sounds like it was recorded on a sheet of dirty aluminum foil. 

So, the big question is: does this new edition of The Hurdy Gurdy Man favor the richness and deep-sound-staginess of Nevermind or the bowel-loosening bass and eardrum-skewering treble of Feel Flows? 

Fortunately, it's the former. 

I compared Impex's new edition of the record to my seventies, orange-label one on Epic, and for the most part, both are similar in terms of sound stage (excellent) and tone (beautifully balanced). Whether it's because my seventies pressing is from the seventies or because Impex's is simply better, the Impex generally beats the Epic in terms of clarity, as the Epic has slight sibilance and very slight distortion. The Impex plays clean all the way to the inner groove. 

On certain songs, such as "Hi, It's Been a Long Time" and "The Sun Is a Very Magic Fellow", the Impex also makes some dramatic sonic improvements with more distinct definition of instruments and more all-around oomph. 

My only knock is that the copy I received has a mild wave. The spindle hole is perfectly centered, though, and the heavy-cardboard sleeve and liner-notes insert are nice bonuses, but its the robust audio that makes Impex's edition of The Hurdy Gurdy Man shine.