Saint Just

Saint Just released two albums of lovely, fragile prog-folk across the mid-seventies, both on the legendary Harvest label. At this stage, the group were a trio, including Jenny Sorrenti (sister of Alan Sorrenti, whose 1982 album Aria is well worth hearing, and who guests here), Toni Verde, and Robert Fix. While Verde was the conceptualist behind the album, Sorrenti’s vocals sealed the deal, her soaring tone reminiscent of English folk singers such as Maddy Prior and Jacqui McShee. Saint Just’s music merged interests in folk and progressive rock with a keen eye toward early and medieval music, and they seemed to have a modular approach to song construction, such that the extended opener, “Il Flume Inondo”, moves through various phases, returning to circular figures for guitar and saxophone, textures melting into each other, structures toppling before being slowly reconstructed by the musicians. It’s a quiet thrill of an album, and expansive in a way that much contemporaneous acid-folk could only dream of.