Indian Summer

AMG Review of Indian Summer

Stewart Mason
All Music Guide

One of Pete Seeger's most non-traditional and interesting albums, Indian Summer contains the soundtracks to four different short films. The entirety of side one is taken up by the soundtrack to Jules V. Schwerin's non-narrative film Indian Summer, composed and recorded by Seeger with his son, Michael Seeger, who between them play fiddle, banjo, guitar, bamboo flute, harmonica, pump organ, 12-string guitar, and drums, with incidental voices and sound effects (from birdsong to heavy machinery) from the film's soundtrack mixed in. It's a fascinating, wide-ranging piece that wanders through a variety of moods and musical settings, one of those soundtracks that makes the listener want to see the movie itself. Side two consists of three shorter soundtracks, to Norman McLaren's Horizontal Lines (featuring Seeger overdubbing himself on half a dozen instruments, with sound effects) and two films by himself and wife Toshi Seeger, The Many-Colored Paper (an overdubbed two-guitar improvisation on "Deck the Halls" that sounds like it was hugely influential to the folks who began Windham Hill Records) and The Country Fiddle (three examples of raditional country fiddle playing with banjo and clogging accompaniment). Richly musical and historically important, this is an often-overlooked but utterly essential Pete Seeger release.