The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
's first album for
Reprise
was the best of the group's career, in large part because it was the most song-oriented. It was still plenty weird, almost to the point of stylistic schizophrenia, but when you got down to it, much of the record was comprised of fairly catchy songs in the neighborhood of two and three minutes. At times they sounded like reasonably normal, fairly talented
Byrds
-like
folk-rockers
(
"Transparent Day,"
P.F. Sloan
's
"Here's Where You Belong"
); at others, a
Kinks
garage
band (
"If You Want This Love"
); and at others, a fey
Baroque pop
outfit (the orchestrated
"Will You Walk With Me"
). There was an undercurrent of unsettling weirdness and even paranoia, though, in some cuts with otherwise pleasing tunes, like
"Shifting Sands,"
with its sizzling distorted guitars;
"I Won't Hurt You,"
with its heartbeat bass and disconnected vocals; and
"Leiyla,"
where a standard teen
garage rocker
suddenly gets invaded by spoken dialog that seems to have been lifted from a vampire B-movie. The cover of
Frank Zappa
"Help, I'm a Rock"
flung them into freakier pastures, emulated convincingly on the group original
"1906,"
an apt
soundtrack
to a bummer acid trip with its constant spoken refrain, "I don't feel well." It's true that all but one of these songs (the nondescript
"'Scuse Me, Miss Rose,"
written by famed
Bob Dylan
/
Johnny Cash
Simon & Garfunkel
producer
Bob Johnston
) is on the
Transparent Day
compilation. But there are good reasons to consider buying the
Sundazed
2001 CD reissue: The thorough liner notes start to unravel the history of this mysterious band, and mono single mixes of
and
"Transparent Day"
are tacked on as bonus tracks. ~ Richie Unterberger