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Street Suite
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Barnes and Noble
Street Suite
Current price: $16.99
Barnes and Noble
Street Suite
Current price: $16.99
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Coming directly from playing live with some of the finest hard rock bands of the era,
entered the studio to record their only album in 1968, released the following year in a limited pressing of 100 LPs. This
reissue collects that entire album with the original lineup's two non-LP 45s, three songs recorded by the altered post-LP lineup, and a couple cuts by
, the latter day band of
leader
. As such, it is the complete collection of the band's intense, sometimes left-leaning psychedelia grounded in blues. The early singles, which show the band as still slightly tentative, include a slowed-down version of
'
bolstered by some nice fuzz guitar and a smoking take on the traditional
as well as two solid band compositions. At this stage in the band's existence,
still mainly sang harmony to
's appealingly gruff lead, but she began to surface out front more on the LP, adding another tensive dimension to the music. This is also where the band's political consciousness began to assert itself. The "suite" in the album's title is not figurative;
opens with a song sequence comprised of the introductory
and
which leads directly into the incendiary
subtitled
Indeed, the song burns with the intensity that it implies, and
' vocals add a subversive edge to the performance.
pulls off some progressive blues that cut a bit deeper than much of the era's blue-eyed blues, and
showed that they were equally capable of slowing things down on
a cut that is both country-ish and reminiscent of
. The second side of the LP displayed its political threads even more so than the first, with titles such as
and the music is as thrilling and immediate as the titles bear, even when, like many of their peers, the lyrics are somewhat more sophomoric than the sentiments. The few cuts that the band recorded following their lineup changes show the band to be a more introspective psychedelic ensemble, though the music still maintains its merits. The songs by
's
, despite the presence of sitar on one of the cuts, are night-and-day away from his former band's music, but they are still pretty songs that show the influence of psychedelia, although they are much closer to an '80s synth-pop sound.
's album should have been more commercially successful than it was, as it is easily one of the stronger second-level psych-blues albums of the decade. ~ Stanton Swihart