Friday 20 December 2013

Sleepy John [1970]



Animal Noises

Another one-off but surviving through contemporary releases that fuel the insatiable appetite for more and more touchstones to this era where many of us wish we could return and perhaps even record our own as well as live the overall dream again [apparently the band’s 1970 recording sessions did not get released as an lp until 1999]. This is a heavy blues rock album, driven by the Hammond organ of David Lee. The band is remembered as a brilliant live act and supported other bands like Moby Grape and The Mothers of Invention. Opener River has the organ drive of Deep Purple, and second Nothing has strong vocal, this linked to the rock guitar solo with an emerging psychedelic sound. Fourth Searching for the World employs more vocal harmony and at times sounds like Jefferson Airplane, and fifth Trying to Fly is a jazzy instrumental, this, like Someones Band just reviewed, hitting the rock requisite buttons of the time, but doing so with heart and some skill. Seventh You Say provides another one of the odd rock album expectations of the time: the ‘comic’ number, often with a Country lilt [or a jug band leaning], and here including various pig, cow, chicken and horse noises. I don’t think you can blame the drugs.

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