THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

One of the weirder albums to come out of the US, this band made an often-experimental psych-prog rock album. As it is often compared with one of the earliest "prog" album, I'd prefer referring you to Vanilla Fudge and Touch or HP Lovecraft rather than this bizarre piece of psych-pop. Don't get me wrong, you will get thrills that most of us 60 & 70's fans are looking for, This female singer-fronted sextet is mainly the work of organ and touché-à-tout experimenter Joe Byrd

For some reasons, this writer can hear the full and many psych effects of the album without hearing much of the avant-garde subtleties described in the booklet of the Cd reissue. I can't even see this music as that much prog rock, more than some kind of extremely bizarre garage rock with some bizarre sound collage, such as the opening friar ambiances leading into some intriguing vocals. The opening American Metaphysical Circus is probably with the closing three-part American Way To Love , the obvious key to the concept of the album (not sure if there is, though). With the following Hard Coming Love and its eerie- searing fuzzed-out (un-listed) guitar, we're definitely in garage rock and full psychedelia (Jefferson Airplane-type), and many other whacked out songs, like I won't Leave My Wooden Wife (but not in the Zappa sense either) are giving this album its inimitable late 60's flavour (even if a lot of it hasn't aged that well), and some of the ideas are also typically early prog ala Vanilla Fudge (Where Is Yesterday) or Stranded In Time, obviously inspired by The Beatles' Eleanor Rigby

In other words, I can help but wonder f there is not way too much hype about this album, even though it is one of the interesting pioneering psych (I wouldn't really put prog forward that much, even though the violin's presence might lead you to think so. Not essential IMHO, but definitely worth the investigation.