Thorinshield - Thorinshield 1968

In any given era, there are numerous albums by rock musicians who've obviously assimilated styles and ideas from many leading figures of the period but don't synthesize them in a particularly interesting way. Such was the case with Thorinshield's only album, where elements of the psychedelic Beatles, the Byrds, California harmony pop groups, and singer/songwriters jostle side by side, but the songs themselves aren't too notable. It's pop-folk-rock sung, played, harmonized, and produced with late-'60s Los Angeles craftsmanship, and if you're looking for stuff that's well-executed with those traits, it has its pleasing qualities. You'd be hard-pressed to say much about what makes this stick out from the crowd, however, and at times the inspirations become kind of obvious. "Brave New World" sounds like a mating of the Byrds, Donovan, and the Mamas & the Papas, for instance; "The Best of It" shades those colors with something of a more mainstream pop slant to the songwriting; "Prelude to a Postlude" nods to earnest singer/songwriters of the time by Bob Lind, Tim Hardin, and the like, though again with a more mainstream approach; and "One Girl" is a pretty blatant, if decent, cop of 1966-1967 Donovan. [The 2006 CD reissue on Fallout adds brief historical liner notes and both sides of the 1968 non-LP single "Family of Man" b/w "Lonely Mountain Again."] AMG.

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