John Martyn’s catalog is a generous lode, and if you have no idea who he is, this is as good a place as any to start. Part of a cohort that included Nick Drake and Richard Thompson, Martyn was an improbably talented (Scottish) guitar player who found a wild and wide valley nestled between folk fingerpicking and jazz and some other unknown kind of soul music. This is where the lava honey of Martyn and bassist Danny Thompson comes into full vaseline focus. “I’d Rather Be The Devil” is the one to play people if you want to freak them out and make them think about U2 or Pink Floyd’s “Run Like Hell.” Martyn was on the leading edge of guitar and echo, though he was also pretty good on fuzz and wah—check “Dreams By The Sea” for his Shaft approximation. The action here is between Martyn’s guitar and Thompson’s bass, though the title track is really about Martyn versus Martyn, his voice and guitar simply dissolving into one grainy stream. “Solid Air” was written for Nick Drake, his close friend, who was dead eighteen months later of an accidental overdose. The standard here is “May You Never,” a sweet and agile tune that is free of the darkness that envelops this album, and which he ended up resenting. Allegedly written for this friend Andy Matthews, it’s a deeply loving song, which may have simply been Martyn talking to himself: “Are you mean like a sweet and crazy brother to me / You know I love you like I should / And you never talk dirty behind my back / Know that there’s ways who would.” He called it a “lollipop” later in life but Richard Thompson was right to call it a “hymn.” Time has made this album a clear highpoint and future generations will likely bring it further into the sun, as it is really a whole world.