EMI
Folk Music, 1988

Sarah Brightman’s very early albums are as rare as dinosaur fossils. If you thought her 1990 album As I Came of Age was hard to find before YouTube came along, The Trees They Grow So High is even more of a unicorn fossil.

Released in 1988, this album wasn’t even listed on Ms Brightman’s official YouTube channel. Wonder why? Contract issues? Licensing nightmares? Artistic embarrassment? Did someone lose the master tapes?

If one does manage to track this elusive album down — perhaps through the darkest corners of eBay, a dusty used CD shop, or a mysterious file-sharing site that definitely doesn’t exist — it’s… something.

There are 19 English folk songs ranging from the title track to Oliver Cromwell, all done in Ms Brightman’s trademark operatic style** to the backing of a mere piano.

If this sounds, ahem, financially efficient, it probably is. The production value is sparse in the way that a college dorm room is “minimalist, although to be fair, this isn’t necessarily a problem. The songs themselves are barebones in a good way, not needing much garnishing or special musical effects to make them work.

However — and this is a big however —one really has to be a fan of English folk songs to truly get into this album. And well, this reviewer isn’t. Come on, we can’t like everything!

Furthermore, the single pattern of a piano tinkling while Sarah Brightman aahs and waahs her way through each song tends to make everything sound similar. Not identical, but similar enough that after track seven, your brain starts going, “Wait, didn’t I just hear this one?”

Hence, the album can feel repetitive and even monotonous, like being stuck in a very pretty, very tasteful elevator that only plays one genre of music. You appreciate the craftsmanship and the artistry, but you also start wishing the elevator would just get to your floor already.

You may even start wishing for a time machine to let the Celtic Woman ladies and an entire orchestra drop in to lend some background vocals, harmonies, or something to break up the sameness. Yes, mixing Scottish and Welsh performers with British folk songs would probably send some patriotic purists into cardiac arrest, but at this point, that feels like a worthy trade-off.

In the end, this album is worth a listen if you want to hear a more restrained, vocally disciplined Sarah Brightman that follows the sheet music precisely, enunciates every syllable clearly, and doesn’t go off on wild vocal runs just because she can.

But this reviewer can’t help wishing that she’d let loose and gone full Diva Plavalaguna with a space orchestra behind her, some dramatic key changes, maybe a few alien backing singers, and enough reverb to fill a cathedral. That would be the folk album we all deserve.