The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band - Part One (Reprise, 1967)
 

Tracklisting :

A1 Shifting Sands
A2 I Won't Hurt You
A3 1906
A4 Help, I'm A Rock
A5 Will You Walk With Me
B1 Transparent Day
B2 Leiyla
B3 Here's Where You Belong
B4 If You Want This Love
B5 'Scuse Me, Miss Rose
B6 High Coin

File under/for fans of : jangle pop / psychedelic pop / proto indie / melodic psych / Bydsian pop / 60's pop

A short album, especially by today's standards (although some of the CD re-issues have bonus tracks tagged onto the end), a highly entertaining, breezy in parts, chameleon of an album that always leaves you wanting more.

An album that oscillates between the melodic 60's guitar pop of "If You Want This Love" to the more leftfield "1906" to the even further out there "Help, I'm A Rock" (a Zappa cover).

Byrdsian guitars a-plenty in the more upbeat, poppier moments, a genuinely sad, haunting ballad in "Will You Walk With Me" and a simple sounding, but, actually fairly complex twin guitar / twin vocal of super-catchy "Transparent Day", which also uses left right channels on a call and response vocal.

The jewel in the crown, however, is "I Won't Hurt You", a bittersweet paen to a crush/loved one, wistful vocals, gentle, chimng guitars and featuring a drum beat that is actually a human heartbeat. "The stars are in your eyes / I'll take a spaceship and try and go and find you"....an understated, largely ndiscovered minor classic, released in the same year as Sgt Pepper, Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, Kaleidoscop's Tangerine Dream amongst many others...

There was definately something very good in the water back then.

(9/10)

I think they were one of the better psychedelic rock/pop groups of that era. Too bad they didn't get more attention back then. They were on par with a lot of their more famous peers but just didn't manage to catch on with a wider audience for whatever reason.

awesome