IT'S A BEAUTIFUL DAY

Where does it stop being psychedelic and stop being progressive? These guys often have both in one song, seemingly. The classical influences are most evident on "White Bird", LaFlamme and Santos's vocals blend really well. The light feel of this track is balanced by the longer freakouts like "Time Is", which is probably their best extended length piece. "Girl w/ No Eyes" has a great eerie baroque feel "Bombay Calling", best track here, inspired Deep Purple's "Child In Time" who knew that these SF psych- heads would provide the riff for a great piece of prog metal? Also kudos to superb use of violin and flute, instruments not usually found in rock in 69. IABD have been compared to Jefferson Airplane a lot, but the closest thing in the Airplane's catalog to this album is After Bathing at Baxter's, and this is more advanced than that. These guys are pushing the boundaries of their music to the breaking point.

It's too bad that on the CD I have (I never owned the record) the sound quality is average at best, and Mr. Katz's production is riddled with psychedelic clichés like too much phasing or fuzz filter or out of phase stereo panning at inappropriate moments. I even heard that Katz had as many as 3 different bands tour under the name It's a Beautiful Day that weren't really the true band.

Wish I'd read Proghead's warning about Katz BEFOOOOORE I bought the CD version NEVER AGAIN SAN FRANCISCO SOUND!