SURREALISTIC PILLOW

"Surrealistic Pillow" is the 2nd full-length studio album by US rock act Jefferson Airplane. The album was released through RCA Victor in February 1967. It´s the successor to "Jefferson Airplane Takes Off" from August 1966. Since the debut there have been two lineup changes. Grace Slick has replaced Signe Toly Anderson on female vocals and drummer Skip Spence has been replaced by Spencer Dryden. The album was a major commercial succes and peaked at #3 on Billboard's pop albums chart and spawned two hit singles in "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love" which peaked at #8 and #5 respectively on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The former is a Grace Slick penned track, while the latter was written by her brother-in-law Darby Slick and originally released as a single titled "Someone to Love", by The Great Society (Grace Slick´s former band before joining Jefferson Airplane).

While "Jefferson Airplane Takes Off" (1966) was mainly rooted in blues and American folk and generally didn´t feature many psychadelic elements, "Surrealistic Pillow" adds psychadelic elements to Jefferson Airplane´s sound to great effect. The music is not overtly experimental or psychadelic tinged, but the songs are rather simple pop/rock tunes with psychadelic tendencies. Tracks like "She Has Funny Cars", "White Rabbit", and "Plastic Fantastic Lover" all represent the new style of the band. The songs predominantly feature male lead vocals but a couple of the songs feature Slick on lead vocals.

The musicianship is strong with passionate vocal performances and sharp harmonies. The rhythm section are a tight playing organic unit, and the guitarists compliment each other well. And there are quite a few guitars on the album, which is one of the cornerstones of the band´s sound. "Surrealistic Pillow" is packed in a detailed and organic sounding production, which suits the material well and upon conclusion it´s a quality release by Jefferson Airplane and a 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.