H.P. LOVECRAFT

H.P. Lovecraft: The man, the myth, the legend, the psychedelic rock band. As a first album in 1967, the band was immediately ambitious with their approach with its vast array of styles and instruments. The production was quite good for its time as well, and the musicians were tight in their playing; there's really not a sloppy moment to be found here. As a band though, going for a mellower approach to the psychedelic scene that was in full swing resulted in them not being so well remembered years later. As excellent as the band was performance-wise, they hardly showed off their skills with solos & such, thus I would have to say that their defining aspect would have to be their vocal harmonies, which ring similar to bands like Jefferson Airplane and even The Moody Blues. These guys can sing!

This debut has a fair share of covers, with the most familiar being hippie anthem Let's Get Together, which actually isn't so bad at all. A little strange though, almost like a mash up of the original song and the theme from "Friends", but not as horrifying as that description might imply. Some of these songs are catchier than others, and some of the songs are just oddball, especially towards the end of the album, when the band really starts bouncing around stylistically. You have a silly ragtime song with an even sillier 'acid trip' moment tossed into the middle of it, plus there's the Dean Martin on acid lounge of That's How Much I Love You, Baby..., and the last track is like some brief (but well done) Gregorian chant, which probably wasn't heard all that often in the rock scene back in 1967. But overall, there's nothing really captivating about this album to make it memorable or stick out in any way from the slew of other bands releases during that era...

Except for one thing...The White Ship. Pretty much the album's centerpiece and the longest track, this song is flat out greatness. Personally, I find it no surprise that the standout track by a band called H.P. Lovecraft would be the only song on the album that is based on the author's work, but regardless, this song is fantastic. Starting off with some chimes and a slow trippy pace, The White Ship possesses some stellar vocal work, Richard Wright style keyboards and some overall beautiful and haunting atmospheric passages. It's some great space rock (not proto-anything really) and if the band released a few more songs with that level of inspiration, they might have left a much better remembered legacy. Maybe more Lovecraft inspired tunes...a colour out of space, a whisperer in darkness, hanging out with an Innsmouth chick, anything related to the dude might have helped (they did go for the Mountains of Madness on their next effort), but at least we got The White Ship.