Pitchfork

Now, in order to better demonstrate the breadth of this movement and the astonishing reach of Mitchell's influence, the inveterate crate-diggers of the Numero Group present Wayfaring Strangers: Ladies From the Canyon. Diligently researched and compiled with the label's characteristic attention to detail, the collection gathers 14 impossibly rare tracks by female folkies from every corner of the nation, covering an era which spans roughly from 1971-76. Variously funded by parents, church groups or community organizations, these songs originally appeared on private-press albums that were issued in pressings as small as 50 copies, and each retains a certain undeniable handmade charm.

The compilation appears at a time when reissues of unjustly overlooked folk singers like Judee Sill, Vashti Bunyan, Bridget St. John, and Linda Perhacs are still fresh on the shelves. Unlike those performers, however, few artists on Ladies From the Canyon project a musical personality distinctive or eccentric enough to carry an entire album. (Nor, it should be noted, are there any truly psychedelic notes ever played or sung.) In fact, the most striking aspect of this collection is the utter uniformity of its perfomances, not only in sound but in mood and spirit. Nearly all of these vocalists sing in a rich, Joni-like alto over spare arrangements of guitar and piano. And despite their differences in geography and background, each performer achieves a nearly identical sense of dreamy, melancholic longing, sounding content to leave the wider dynamic range of rage, lust, joy, and defiance (not to mention humor) to a separate generation of female artists.

It would take a hardened heart, however, to ignore the simple beauty evident in tracks like Collie Ryan's gorgeous, haiku-like "Cricket" or Priscilla Quinby's nautical "With All Hands". And, as one might expect from such a "real people" collection, a couple of these tracks possess that indefinable, unschooled strangeness that is peculiar to outsider art. The most engaging such example is Shira Small's eliptical "Eternal Life", with its casual declaration that "Eternal life is the intersection of the line of time and the plane of now." Not to be outdone, the haunting "Maybe in Another Year," is sung by Peoria teen Jennie Pearl with a clear-eyed innocence that recalls the best moments of the Langley Schools Music Project. Also noteworthy is 15-year-old Ellen Warshaw's surprisingly forceful and harrowing take on the Stones' "Sister Morphine", one of the few cuts that feels out of keeping with the collection's overall earth mother vibration.

Most of the performers on Ladies From the Canyon have long since retired from the music business. One notable exception is Barbara Sipple, who has since gone on to a successful career as an opera singer, and whose "Song of Life" is one of several here that is tinged with the mystic, soft-focused Christianity typical of the era. As further evidenced by tracks like Carla Sciaky's "And I a Fairytale Lady", there is constant yearning that courses through nearly all of these songs, a yearning for some external force-- be it Jesus, a waylaid Prince Charming, or simply a record contract-- to come and deliver each singer from her lonesome solitude. But as Ladies From the Canyon amply illustrates, these scattered, isolated voices were actually far from alone, and maybe their inclusion here within this fascinating time capsule can provide some small echo of the communion they once sought to gain through their long-neglected music.