Ten years later, the man who gave us Soul of a City Boy has recorded another solo album which could just as properly be called Soul of a Country Boy. Here the locus of the soul is not New York City, but Point Reyes Station, Marin County, California: heaven on earth. Although Jesse is grateful that "the ruts in my road/And the curves keep the tourists at bay," much of Song For Juli might sound to the cynical like a singing commercial ordered by the local Chamber of Commerce. Unlike those other California chauvinists, the Beach Boys and the Mamas and Papas, Jesse does not invite a high degree of vicarious participation.

Other domestic comforts are not slighted—the album is after all named for his daughter, and "Evenin'" is a love song to his wife—but his greatest love affair is with nature. The original premise of "Evenin'" evaporates as his mind cannot help but wander to his ridge-top home. He can vividly conjure up his redwood house and the faces of his friends, but his wife's "face is getting harder to remember." In "Song For Juli" he can only imagine his daughter out in the sand, or walking over hill and stream. Jesse is as he seems on the LP's photo insert—dazed by the sunlight.

Fortunately, though the record is homey in sentiment, it is not in craft. Jesse has assembled an altogether remarkable band, including hornmen Jim Rothermel and Mel Martin and guitarist Eddy Ottenstein. The arrangements are flexible and open-ended, a good deal more spontaneous than, say, Van Morrison's, with some room for unfettered blowing, yet the performance is of such high caliber that the results are always perfectly poised and free from pratfalls.

If the analogy with that other citizen of Marin can be carried further, Young's music also hovers between folk and jazz. "Miss Hesitation" partly derives from "Hesitation Blues," but when the recitation of the trials of the itinerant musician is interrupted by a momentary reverie, the harmonies and rhythm change, becoming cooler and more oblique. "Song For Juli" begins with simple acoustic finger-picking, then stretches into a lengthy flute improvisation before asserting itself as a song. And "Ridgetop," which is another paean to the outdoors, resounds with the turbulence of the metropolis. "Ridgetop" is for this reason the only number here which could be called gripping.

The first two stanzas of "Country Home," denoting the misery Jesse equates with city living and reminding us of the city boy's early laments like "Four in the Morning," provide some background to the bliss of the other tracks, and corroborate the introspection and poignancy which can always be heard in his voice. While the narrowness of subject matter on Song For Juli begins to get tiresome, all of the highly musical happiness present is, in this light, quite unobjectionable. (RS 156)

BEN GERSON