Melody Maker (UK) July 7, 1973.
Mel sings in less mannered style than usual, and she is developing a shade more power.
A good song and she sings: "You can plant seeds in my garden,, any old time." Careful love, you never know what might come up.
Record Mirror (UK) July 7, 1973.
Melanie paying tribute to Sky Saxon? I think not, as this is just another slab of Safka whimsy, backed by humming., bongos and the odd bit of full choral support. Fine for fans, as the record reviewer's copout joke goes.
DISC (UK) July 7. 1973.
Look what Melanie's done to her song. She's taken a mildly-interesting phrase and repeated it several-times to make a verse, She's then added a totally-inconsequential chorus to it and followed with a weak instrumental section. In fact, if you listen carefully to the whole work you realise that she's very cleverly managed to fill up three minutes of record, and yet provided us with very little.
The lyrics which are based on the opening line: "you can plant your seeds in my garden," are just as disappointing. Continuing in this vein, she sings lines like "you can put the words to my song" and "you can bake your bread in my oven." Thus, there's no special significance in the title, which equally well have been "Bread" or "Oven" or some other mono-syllable extract from the lyrics.
Having said all this, though, there are some good points to the piece. Notably Melanie's delivery which fluctuates from loud-to-soft in her characteristic style, and some useful backing vocals. Even so I suspect that all this will fall on stony ground and fail to take root.