This is definitely an album for my personal "gallery of greats". Of course its predecessor, S.F. Sorrow is also a fantastic (and surprising) album from the once-gritty Pretties, their Sgt. Pepper's and Magical Mystery Tour psychedelic bonanza. When it failed, founder Dick Taylor called it a day and the band promptly folded. It seemed like the band was forever done when a series of unlikely events brought most of the band back together two years later for the White Album/Abbey Road inspired Parachute. The anything-goes spirit of the White Album shows on the seesawing between sweet and acidic songs, which pointed to the past and future of the band respectively. Meanwhile, songs were stitched together into clumps in the spirit of Abbey Road (the producer, Norman Smith, worked with the Beatles through the Rubber Soul period, so clearly there was always an eye on that band, and it only makes sense that during that time they were overwhelmingly setting the tone of the era).
The band died a second time following the failure (again!!) of this album, but certain members decided they weren't finished and quickly pulled it back together, resulting in most of the bonus tracks on this disc. That lineup, with a few cosmetic changes, would troop on to mid-decade before croaking due to the loss of all original personnel...and of course reform YET AGAIN with a strangely new wave approach. Truly, the Pretty Things are one of the most under-appreciated and unlikely bands in the history of rock, which is what makes them so interesting to me.
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