THE COLLECTORS

The Collectors representate the Canadian psychedelic movement. Their album cover is a real beauty and with the backcover they'll make us sure that they wanna be really psychedelic.The first side contains five short songs and the second side just one. The second side is a compilation of the first side and adds something extra.

-side 1- The songs are mostly folk-rooted and sometimes reach a garage sound. The first side is only slightly psychedelic, but sometimes they use some nice harmonies and the vocals are really great. The vocalist is capable of soft and harmonious voices and also of stronger vocals. There are lot's of spacy background vocals.

My favourite song of the first side surely is Howards Christian's Older. The lyrics are about a boy who on early age was a genious, but losts it's grip on mankind.

-side 2- As I've mentioned before, the second side is a compilation of the songs of the first side and adds something extra. The extra-part contains some really acid sounds - in fact they seemed to try to make as much noice at once as possible for a few times. Well, I thougth this side was a bit fragmentated - just a lot of themes were putted after each other. Still, it's a nice effort.

Because of the lengthy composition this could be seen as protoprog, but still it was just an example of the psychedelic scene.

As I do really like psychedelic music I can easily compare this record to other psychedelic records like Love's "Da Capo" which also contains a lenghty second side. I thougth that lot's of other psychedlic bands like Country Joe and the Fish, The 13th Floor Elevators, The United States of America, etc. were a bit better than the Collectors. For a psychedelic rock collector this is a nice addition to his/her collection, but I should not mention it as a masterpiece. So, four stars for the Canadians.