Man in the Hills

Man in the Hills followed Marcus Garvey on Island Records in 1976, again produced by Jack Ruby. By then Burning Spear was a star in Jamaica and a cult name in the United Kingdom. The album is simple and unadorned, with songs that recall his childhood in Saint Ann's Bay, and it is quieter, more pastoral and more dreamlike than its predecessor. Graham Reid noted in a 2000 interview piece that in the 1970s and 1980s, between tours and recordings, Rodney would retreat to his garden in Saint Ann's Bay to tend crops, and that one album of the period was pointedly titled Man in the Hills. "Is It Good" and "No More War" still address social issues. The title track sets country life above city life, an idea tied in Jamaican history to the hill communities formed by escaped slaves and, after emancipation in 1838, the so-called Free Villages.

It also includes a version of Door Peep, the 1969 single that opened his recording career. Christgau gave the album a B+, finding the incantations all but irresistible through most of side one before the ritual wore down.