When his debut album, Red Hash, came out in a run of 2,500 copies back in 1973, folk rocker GARY HIGGINS was in jail, serving 13 months for selling hashish. He never released a second disc–after he was freed he returned to music as a hobby rather than a vocation–but earlier this year Drag City reissued Red Hash on CD, and Higgins is now a darling of the burgeoning neo-psych-folk community. Obscurity has no doubt fortified his cult following, just as it’s worked wonders for Vashti Bunyan and Linda Perhacs, but his record easily stands on its own merits. Over gorgeous acoustic arrangements Higgins delivers warmly melodic, introspective tunes whose lyrics unfold and dissolve like dream fragments: “I pick notes from the sky / An old plane go flyin’ by / Don’t know who got the right of way / I’ll know someday, yeah,” he sings on “I Pick Notes From the Sky.” And he can be funny too–he switches from his usual breathy, low-key vocals to a gruff, quasi-Beefheart delivery for the ribald “Down on the Farm.” This is his Chicago debut; he’ll be accompanied by his 24-year-old son, Graham. –Peter Margasak
