“We want to choose happiness… but we find we are suffering” intones the earnest Driscoll on ‘The Choice’. And that spirit underwrites much of this welcome reissue. Recorded in 1969 but actually released in 1971, the same year she contributed to her by then-husband Keith Tippet’s humungous Centipede, 1969 finds Driscoll in transition from the Hammond-driven hits with Brian Auger, toward her more jazz-related future. Driscoll had contributed three strong songs to Auger’s Streetnoise in the same year, addressing racism and Russia’s invasion of Czechoslovakia (sound familiar?). All her eight songs here explore similar themes driven by a quest for personal and social freedom. ‘Leaving it all Behind’, with its gorgeous oboe and tight brass illuminating Driscoll’s forthright vox, is a strong runout, while ‘The Choice’, with Downes’ sensuous flute, is likewise a meditation on making sense of a world that post-1967’s Summer of Love, post-Paris ’68 would climax in 1969 with the horror of Meredith Hunter’s murder at Altamont. (Thinks: Another black man killed by white ‘security’…?) There’s obviously a jazz frisson here with many stars of the then burgeoning Brit Jazz on board, but the songs fit squarely into a pop-rock format, with a big nod to the singer-songwriter resurgence of the time (as on ‘Lulu’). A fitting reflection of the era’s zeitgeist, but 1969 also feels eerily prophetic.