Musicology

The Plastic Cloud's self-titled album is a strangely compelling and overall delightful mix of West Coast '60s sounds, without any two songs sounding exactly alike, or even displaying the same attributes. Not that any fan of that era will mind any of it, and especially not the Byrds-like harmonies on the opening number, "Epistle to Paradise," which sounds like a more ornate and trippier follow-up to "Renaissance Fair" coupled with "Here Without You." But on "Shadows of Your Mind" the fuzztone guitar cuts in, along with Randy Umphrey's drumming -- which recalls John Densmore's work with the Doors -- for a kind of Buffalo Springfield homage. And "Art's a Happy Man" comes off like a weird amalgam of the early Jefferson Airplane and Spanky & Our Gang. But the ten-minute "You Don't Care" may well bring to mind Big Brother & the Holding Company instrumentally, and the Notorious Byrd Brothers album vocally and psychically. And "Bridge Under the Sky" evokes memories of the Youngbloods. It's all enjoyable and full of pleasant surprises. AMG.

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