"All the singers sound a bit like MacColl,"
Could not agree less - each one of them sound exactly like themselves - that was basically what the Critics group was about; developing a range of tones pitches, efforts ornamentation to enable you to select from the entire repertoire.
When the album was conceived you could go into any club in Britain and find Carthy copiers, Waterson wailers, Rose remakes and Bellamy bleaters..... and Killen sinuses. We used to have a bet with each other where some of the singers had learned their songs - and when we followed it up, we were
Even MacColl didn't sound "like MacColl" when he performed - he approached his songs as individual items, and sang them as the objective of the song demanded, allowing his analysis of the song to select the tone, effort, speed.....
My wife Pat played an album of Ewan's to a workkmate who had never heard folk-song once once; her response was, "very interesting - which one was MacColl?"
For the life of me, I've never undertood where this "sounding like MacColl" came from, especially in a revival that seemed hell-bent of copying their particular flavour of the month.
Jim Carroll