Frugal Puritan
Album: Frugal Puritan
Label: Folk Police
Tracks: 9
Website: http://www.folkpolicerecordings.com

A curiosity in more ways than one, is this new release in Folk Police's Northwestern Series. Its press release informs us that it emanates from recordings that came into the label's possession third-hand via a collector, accompanied only by a handful of photos and a set of explanatory notes - and yet no concrete information about the band, the personnel, the songs or the actual LP release. But the concomitant back-story appears a familiar one - at least to those of us who were around to share those times…

More importantly perhaps, what of the music contained within the enigmatic sleeve of this album? Springing no particular surprises on the listener, it's almost exactly the kind of mix of sounds you'd imagine might be made by a late-period-hippie band of minor but not entirely insignificant talent who'd have gone unrecognised and unpromoted at the time: a hotch-potch of pastoral, slightly earnest acid-folk with flashes of musical inspiration here and there, predominantly acoustic-based with subtle psychedelic touches, occasional keyboard embellishments and primitive studio effects, and lyrics wavering between Christian dogma, all-purpose mysticism, Crowley and a somewhat confused but intentionally all-embracing musical direction. Over the course of the album's nine tracks, Lost Son's gentle and fey hippy musings (complete with some occasionally quite off-key vocal harmonies) give way to a fuzzy, feedback-drenched prologue that ushers in an extended (11-minute) extravaganza (Seven Stars) that culminates in a full-blown acid-rock guitar solo, which then dissipates in a welter of ominous echoey whisperings before the uninvolved proto-electronica of Dives & Lazarus Outro, the LP's doorstop and structural bookend. The album does, naturally, contain some embarrassing moments, not least the standard-issue happy-clappy mantra (Give The Lord A) Handclap, but around half of the tracks are worth at least a couple of plays before consigning the CD to the reference shelves - for it could never be considered anything more than a very minor-league entry in the annals of acid-folk. In fact, I didn't think it was really all that good either musically or lyrically … and really only likely to be of interest to obsessive cultists and diehard sub-genre collectors.

… And then, on glancing again at the aforementioned press release, I spotted an inconsistency in the quoted release date, which is variously given as both 1st and 15th April. I'd also been more than a touch suspicious at the better-than-respectable audio quality Pete Philipson's ostensible remastering had achieved, especially for something taken presumably from a rare vinyl original (any master tapes surely can't have survived the catastrophic fire referred to in the sleeve notes). And I guess I was also mildly surprised at the efforts that had been made to retrieve and present this honestly-not-terribly-good lost album for today's hungry audience, however knowingly authentic to the Zeitgeist it proved on more than a cursory listen. I am thus fast coming to the conclusion that we are here being presented with a clever (present-day) pastiche of the hallowed sub-genre. Its posturings are almost too obvious, its delivery distinctly on the sophisticated side. OK, I get it; this is a nice little in-joke, perpetrated by folks who understand for folks who understand. And yeah, I dig.

David Kidman