WINTER-HARVEST

"Winter-Harvest" shows the Dutch beatsters' confidence to build upon their unremarkable debut. However, most of the album is still heavily steeped in the British beat sounds of the Beatlemania circa 1963-64, thus making it a bit old- fashioned for the revolutionary 1967 when it was released. Good thing is that all the songs are their originals; there are no covers here, but unfortunately few of them break any new ground. For me the best moments are those leaning on the then also quite popular R'n'B style - such as "In My House" and "You've Got the Intention to Hurt Me" - where Kooymans on guitar and Gerritsen on keyboards (and bass) display considerable talents on their respective instruments. In these moments GOLDEN EARRING suggests, in a way similar to the early the WHO, their future hard- rocking bursts. But, it is still a long way to go until reaching their recognizeable style of the early 1970s and in the process they also had to to recruit Barry Hay to feature on vocals and reeds in order to complete their songwriting and performing line-up. "Winter-Harvest" is therefore not recommended for casual listeners, while GOLDEN EARRING completists would probably find several songs of interest on this LP as a curiosity to remind of their humble beginnings.