The British psychedelic music scene of 1967 was too strong to be contained by one collection. It makes perfect sense that
Grapefruit would need to follow up their 2016 collection
Let's Go Down and Blow Our Minds with another set that explores that insanely fruitful year. It's more of a shock that it took almost seven years for
Too Much Sun Will Burn: British Psychedelic Sounds of 1967, Vol. 2 to appear. Stretched across three discs worth of sitars, backwards guitars, phased drums, songs about technicolor dreams, and trippy as you please production, the music here is delightful and sprinkled with moments of genius and absurdity. The difference between the two might depend upon the judgment of the listener. Many of the bands from the first edition are back, both big names like
Traffic,
the Who,
the Small Faces, and
the Pretty Things, second-tier heroes like
the Creation,
Tomorrow, and
the Action, along with a big batch of obscure bands only a collector could love (or recognize). It's the perfect mix for a collection like this, one that should please both neophytes and grizzled old heads alike. Alongside the artists and bands one might expect to find, the set's compilers take a few left turns in the name of casting a wide net. That means for every psych pop jam like
John's Children's "Go-Go Girl" or
the Move's "Wave the Flag and Stop the Train," there's a folky interlude like
Sandy Denny and the the Strawbs' pastoral "Two Weeks Last Summer" or a goofy interlude like
the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band's "The Intro and the Outro." There's also room for outliers like
Elton John, whose "Nina" is a striking example of cabaret psych,
Lisa & Francesca, who turn in some very witchy, super spooky acid folk on "Silver Man," and
Big Jim Sullivan and his sitar freakout "LTTS." There is also a very healthy number of bands included whose approaches intersect with harmony pop to create a softer brand of psych, a sound many collections like this tend to overlook. Some of the best tracks of that ilk are
the Orange Bicycle's "Hyacinth Threads" and
Marmalade's "There Ain't No Use in Hangin' On." It makes for a heady mixture of wall-shaking hard rock, flower-wielding sweetness, and off-the-wall oddness that's a joy to dip into a bit at a time or take down in one giant swallow. It's clear from the music chosen for inclusion that there was something magical in the air in 1967, definitely more than enough to justify a second collection and as such,
Too Much Sun Will Burn is well-chosen, lovingly packaged, and utterly bedazzling. ~ Tim Sendra
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