Unicorn – ‘Shed No Tear: The Early Late Unicorn’ (2024)
It’s possible that British country-rock quartet Unicorn has found more fans since disbanding 45 years ago than during their eight years of existence.
The group’s original four studio albums (1971-78) have been reissued multiple times, with three collections of archive demos surfacing along the way.
And what a backstory: After the first album, ‘Uphill All the Way,’ Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour took the band under his wing, providing them with free use of his just-completed home studio to record demos (ultimately released as ‘Laughing Up Your Sleeve’ in 2018). Furthermore, he secured a management contract for the band; covered their song ‘There’s No Way Out of Here’ on his 1978 self-titled solo debut; produced Unicorn albums No. 2 through 4; and even played pedal steel on a few tracks.
Bass player Pat Martin, reached by email, related how Unicorn met Gilmour in 1973:
“We were asked to play at a record plugger’s wedding for free, but he promised there would be lots of famous people there,” Martin said. “We’d had that sort of offer many times but he had done us some favors, so we agreed. David Gilmour came up to me and said he liked our original songs, particularly the lyrics. He asked for my phone number and phoned a few days later saying he had just had a studio built in his house and would we like to demo our original songs. He said it was for free but he would be experimenting with his new studio.
“We went to his studio. He had a half-inch, eight-track Brenell with no control room, so he was doing it using headphones. He said we could use any of his guitars and amps.
“He was great to work with, full of enthusiasm, and we spent the day putting down about five tunes. We went back maybe six times in total, and it was excellent.
“We didn’t get the four-track Teac and recording gear in our Shed rehearsal room/studio [see below] until after ‘Blue Pine Trees’ [Unicorn’s second album] came out. It made it possible to demo a song just when it was starting to happen, and we would send them to David for approval.”
The first 14 tracks on ‘Early Late’ were previously released on a 2002 album as ‘Shed No Tear: The Shed Studio Sessions,’ with a handful of bonus tracks thrown in. Originally produced and engineered by Martin, they comprise late-era demos intended for what would have been a fifth Unicorn album — had times not changed and their style of music fallen out of favor — and were recorded in the Shed: a soundproofed, one-car brick garage owned by Martin’s family and used by the band since their genesis as The Late in the 1960s.
Unicorn’s demos (whether recorded at Gilmour’s home studio or the Shed) consistently have rivaled final product in terms of quality when ultimately issued. But when it comes to the ‘Shed No Tear’ recordings, there’s one distinct difference in the credits: For whatever reason, chief songwriter and second guitarist/keyboardist Ken Baker handles lead vocals (rather than drummer/regular lead singer Pete Perryer), and does so admirably.
Not much information about Kevin Smith, the group’s incredibly talented lead guitarist who’s equally adept on mandolin and slide, is available. When asked about the status of his former bandmates, Martin said “Ken Baker and I are still alive, Pete Perryer and [original Unicorn lead guitarist] Trevor Mee both passed away, and we lost contact with Kevin Smith.” But he added that Smith had been in a ’60s three-piece blues outfit called The Elite, who The Late once went out on a package tour with.
There isn’t a subpar song on the ‘Shed No Tear’ portion of ‘Early Late Unicorn.’ The usual top-notch musicianship, three-part harmonies and Baker’s distinctive melodiousness — sometimes marked by brief time-signature and chord changes that are sly, subtle and cleverly placed — are all there. The fact that Baker sings lead rather than Perryer only serves to give these tracks the feel of an alternate-universe Unicorn.
The seven cuts tacked on after the “Shed No Tear” demos, cherry-picked from among The Late’s demos, represent the “early” portion of ‘Early Late’ and are enjoyable in their own right.
If they haven’t already, listeners should check out Disc 4 of 2020’s four-CD retrospective ‘Slow Dancing: The Recordings 1974–1979,’ which contains yet another 19 previously unreleased Unicorn archive tracks.
Peter Hund
Unicorn – ‘Shed No Tear: The Early Late Unicorn’ (Think Like A Key Music, 2024)
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Unicorn | Interview | “There’s No Way out of Here”
