Thompson has often bragged that his 1972 solo debut was the quickest deletion in the history of Warner Bros. records, a perhaps apocryphal claim that nevertheless underscores the deafening critical and commercial silence that greeted the album’s release. Forty-five years on, it isn’t hard to extrapolate why the record failed to catch on — Thompson’s set of rocked-up folk sought to hybridize his background and influences, but did so a little too effectively, proving too bracing for folk purists from the Fairport Convention camp and too subtle for fans of the Who and Led Zep’s maximum R&B. Time has been kind to Henry The Human Fly, and it sounds fresher and more vibrant today than the vast majority of the roots-based music of the period. Typical of Thompson, Henry The Human Fly is replete with tough, uncompromising material. Hard-riffing opener “Roll Over Vaughn Williams” strikes an ominous tone, unspooling tales of London gutter life, mythologizing violent street urchins and admonishing those who “live in fear.” “Poor Ditching Boy” sets a beautiful melody to a tale of brutal physical and spiritual deprivation, while even comparatively winsome tracks like the up-tempo near-pop of “The Angels Took My Racehorse Away” ponders the death of a beloved animal companion. As a fitting introduction to Thompson’s unique moral and spiritual worldview, Henry The Human Fly is largely terrific. As a spectacular commercial failure it would set a different, less desirable template — that of a dazzling talent whose singular, dyspeptic vision would prove too difficult for a wide swath of consumers to metabolize.