JUST A POKE

Nobody could accuse Sweet Smoke of being coy or subtle about their interests - with a band name, album title, and cover art like that, you know you're in for a jam so psychedelic that you can almost smell the bong smoke. Emerging from that early 1970s era where the border between psychedelic rock and progressive rock wasn't especially well-established, the group sits on the psychedelic side of the line whilst taking ample influence from the progressive side, with jazzy touches spicing up their performance and the album consisting of just two side-ling jams.

It's very much a product of its time, but it's a pretty decent product at that. There's a bit towards the end of the side 1 jam, Baby Night, where the performers coalesce into this great little cover of the Doors' Soft Parade, which I actually think is better than the Doors' own studio rendition of the song; their loose jam band take on it reinvests it with the acid rock wildness that the rather overpolite production on the Doors album of the same name robbed the composition of. Delicious stuff.