If Middle-earth had a soundtrack album...

[Morthoron]

Yes, yes, I am aware Howard Shore already did the soundtrack for the movie, and it is quite good (I won a 3 CD compilation of the FotR soundtrack from a LotR poetry contest, and enjoy it immensely); however, if there were a pre-existing album from a band/singer that best exemplifies the feeling or mood of Middle-earth, which album would it be? I am sure tucked away somewhere in the BD vaults there is a duplicate thread already discussing this topic, so please forgive my indolence in advance. Besides, I always enjoy a thread discussing music.

Certainly there are specific songs ('Battle of Evermore' and 'Ramble On' by Led Zep have Tolkienesque allusions), and even entire albums devoted to Middle-earth (Enya and Yngwie Malmsteen come to mind), but are there other albums you feel are evocative of Tolkien? I have a few suggestions and would like to hear yours...

Songs from the Wood by Jethro Tull: I always felt that Ian Anderson could have composed a marvelous soundtrack for a LotR movie. Perhaps because much of his music is so fundamentally grounded in English folk, yet classically inclined, that I considered him a natural for the assignment ('A Classic Case' an orchestral rendition of Tull songs that feature the band and ex-Tull mate David Palmer as conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra ranks with The Moody Blues 'Days of Future Passed' as my favorites for use of orchestra within a rock context). In regards to 'Songs from the Wood', that feeling of English minstrelsy is displayed with such virtuousity that one can nearly smell the scots pine and the scent of wild roses that waft in the summer evening breeze of the song 'Velvet Green'.

In the song 'Jack-in-the-Green' (an ode in honor of the woodland spirit exemplified in English May Day celebrations) one can almost sense a hint of Tom Bombadil (or more correctly, the 'Green Man' of English legend):

"The rowan, the oak and the holly tree
are the charges left for you to groom.
Each blade of grass whispers Jack-In-The-Green.
Oh Jack, please help me through my winter's night.
And we are the berries on the holly tree.
Oh, the mistlethrush is coming.
Jack, put out the light."

Likewise, lines evocative of Middle-earth, but plainly descriptive of the land Ian Anderson (and Tolkien) love so well in the song 'The Whistler':

"Deep red are the sun-sets in mystical places.
Black are the nights on summer-day sands.
We'll find the speck of truth in each riddle.
Hold the first grain of love in our hands."

And again in 'Fires at Midnight' (which has a Shire-like quality):

"I believe in fires at midnight ---
when the dogs have all been fed.
A golden toddy on the mantle ---
a broken gun beneath the bed.
Silken mist outside the window.
Frogs and newts slip in the dark ---
too much hurry ruins the body
I'll sit easy ... fan the spark."

Liege and Lief by Fairport Convention: This phenomenal album presents traditional English folk music in a rock context, and it is not so much the song's lyrics that are to me represenative of Middle-earth, it is rather the somber and sad tone of the album that harkens to the first time I read The Silmarillion. At times plaintive and at others powerful, the lead singer Sandy Denny (who, by the way, shared vocals with Robert Plant on the Tolkien-inspired Led Zep song 'Battle of Evermore') conjures an enchanting glimpse of the Elder Days, and the album itself is timeless, straddling the ancient and the modern without dwelling in the past or present.

The eerie 'Reynardine' -- rendered with the ominous yet restrained vocals of Denny -- could well be an accompanying piece to Eöl's seduction of Aredhel:

'Sun and dark, she followed him
his teeth did brightly shine
and he led her up the mountains
Did that sly old Reynardine.'

and the song 'Farewell, Farewell' is evocative of Frodo's feeling of loss and disjointedness:

'Farewell, farewell to you who would hear
You lonely travellers all
the cold north wind will blow again
the winding road does call.

And will you never return to see
Your bruised and beaten sons ?
"Oh, I would, I would, if welcome I were
for they love me, every one".'

But anyway, it seems I ramble on. Please, add your albums for consideration.