ULTIMATE SPINACH

If you are looking for that totally unique sound known as 60s psychedelic rock, you have found it here. Like any other genre, there is good psych and bad. This album is pretty good but not quite great. If the lead guitarist had been a bit better it would have helped.

Like most psychedelic bands the Spinach displays a wide diversity of styles. Some songs sound a bit like Doors styled keyboard driven blues rockers. Other songs that feature female vocalist Debra Hudson are more similar to Curved Air or Its a Beautiful Day. There are also some short instrumental passages that are reminiscent of similar cuts on early Moody Blues records.

The songwriting and arranging are excellent. All the songs were written by the highly skilled keyboardist Bruce Ian-Douglass. The vocals sound good and drummer Keith Lahteinen displays the jazz and RnB influences that were expected of "hippie" drummers back then. Producer Alan Lorber fills the album with great psychedelic sound effects such as reverb and tape loop echo, but rarely reverts to cheap panning effects.

The overall sound and the psychoactive lyrics definitely belong to the 60s and that is why I am only recommending this album for fans of early psychedelic rock or people who want to check out this colorful and creative genre.

Ultimate Spinach are an interesting band in that their existence was a result of the MGM label attempting to capitalize on the popularity of West Coast psych music by creating a completely contrived East Coast psych-pop ‘scene’ in the latter sixties. Ultimate Spinach were the flagship of this effort, which withered rather quickly at a time when beat and intellectual folk rock were still the dominant influences over Boston-area counter culture.

Not that the band didn’t make a decent go of things. Band leader Ian Bruce-Douglas was an accomplished multi-instrumentalist and briefly prolific songwriter who left behind several psych classics, mostly from this album. “Ballad of the Hip Death Goddess” is a very well-constructed eight-minute psych dirge that matches the best of West Coast bands like Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna and the like, and still makes appearances on the occasional late-night FM radio show or flashback podcast. “Plastic Raincoats” was more poppish but equally period-appropriate to a 1967 sound that owed as much to the Beatles and Kinks as it did to later variants like Country Joe and Todd Rundgren.

In the end though this is undeniably a commercial attempt to clone true progressive psych music, and lacks somewhat in dirty, earthy authenticity. The musicianship is excellent, and Barbara Hudson delivers seductive and engaging vocals to give the band an overall appeal that should have gotten them further on the charts than they managed to achieve.

Bruce-Douglas would hold the group together for another album the following year which would be even slightly more polished, but that appears to have been enough for him as he and the rest of the group departed shortly after. Hudson would become the centerpiece for a new lineup that featured mostly journeyman, professional musicians for a decidedly commercial third album to close out the sixties. There is apparently still a band operating under the name Ultimate Spinach today, but with no original members and little of the old repertoire there’s not much to attract prog music fans.

This album and band gets mentioned a fair amount among progressive and psych music circles even today, but given their highly commercial and contrived origins I’m not sure they deserve the elevated status often ascribed to them. This is a good but not great album, worth picking up but not taking too seriously. Three stars and mildly recommended to fans of the late-sixties psych era, but don’t expect to have your mind blown.

peace

A Boston-based band's answer to the West Coast psychedelic scene. Band leader Ian Bruce-Douglas really had some courage to be able to express his philosophical as well as musical ideas here.

1. "Ego Trip" (3:14) Ian Bruce-Douglas' hip hippie philosophy expressed openly in this rather simple four-chord organ-based Doors/San Francisco psychedelia song. (8.875/10)

2. "Sacrifice of the Moon [In Four Parts]" (3:46) a four-part instrumental suite opens using hypnotic bass and organ arpeggi rolling over and over, creating quite an alluring sound and feel. The second part, then, moves into Baroque folk territory with lead recorder played over gentle electric guitar arpeggiated chords. The third part is more old-time folk lullaby-like with lower register of the wooden flute used within the guitar and bass lines. The final part is more West Coast psych-pop with its organ solo over hypnotic bass, drums, and rhythm guitar chord strumming. (8.875/10)

3. "Plastic Raincoating/Hung Up Minds" (2:56) spinet-sounding piano gives this Ian Bruce-Douglas tune a Old West saloon feel--as do the saloon-like background voices and noises. Interesting if more for the relaxed, almost cocky confidence expressed in Ian's vocal performance. (8.6667/10)

4. "(Ballad of) The Hip Death Goddess" (8:14) infectious three-chord psychedelic song over which Barbara Hudson provides some eerie and almost-incongruous frail/fragile "little girl" soprano vocals. Lots of effects used on the multiple guitars. The incessant six-note bass line is quite hypnotic--which gives the extended psychedelic guitar solos and drums their opportunity to dig deep into the listener's psyche. Some of the song's editing is flawed but otherwise this is a very memorable song. (13.75/15)

5. "Your Head Is Reeling" (3:40) more Doors-like experimentation with the expression of Ian Bruce-Douglas' countercultural observations, opinions, and ideas. (8.875/10)

6. "Dove In Hawk's Clothing" (3:54) an almost-standard blues rock vehicle for more of Ian's anti-war venting. The instrumentation is so perfect a representation of the era's musical palettes and ideas. (8.66667/10)

7. "Baroque #1" (4:48) more instrumental West Coast psychedelic blues rock with Doors-like organ play at the bass as Ian Bruce-Douglas works his way through a variety of temporary instruments including harpsichord, effected vocalese, vibraphone, harmonica, and electric guitar. (8.875/10)

8. "Funny Freak Parade" (2:35) more psychedelic sounds and engineering of a pretty standard folk-blues -rock pop song with a very theatric vocal and background. Ian Bruce-Douglas has quite a sense of humor. (8.66667/10)

9. "Pamela" (3:09) opens as if a theatre song to a B-level "horror" film or off-Broadway stage musical farce (pre-Rocky Horror Picture Show). Interesting and amusing but also bewildering. (8.75/10)

Total time: 35:17

Though the music here is rather simple, the ideas being expressed, psychedelic sounds, and vocal performances make this a quite interesting and respectable album. Barbara Hudson is given a lot of attention for her Ultimate Spinach vocal performances when in fact her contributions are quite minimal other than to the one long song, "(Ballad of) the Hip-Death Goddess." The music and ideas expressed here are, in fact, almost entirely the emanations of one individual's creativity.

B/four stars; a very interesting and engaging view and reckoning of a country's counter-cultural, human potential, hippie, and psychedelic perspectives.