Various Artists - Come To The Sunshine; Soft Pop Nuggets From The WEA Vaults (@320)

 

Repost

Various Artists - Come To The Sunshine; Soft Pop Nuggets From The WEA Vaults

Come to the Sunshine: Soft Pop Nuggets from the WEA Vaults Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine.

Since the first Nuggets in 1972, the entire series has been grounded in the gritty, dirty sound of garage rock, so much so that Rhino's 2001 box set of British and foreign psychedelic nuggets favored harder rock over the fruity, precious side of British psych. Collectors treasured rare singles before Nuggets, but the series created an aesthetic that emphasized the raw, trippy, wild, and woolly over the soft, lush, harmony-laden psychedelicized sounds of AM pop radio. The Rubbles Collection, Mindrockers, The Trash Box -- all of them were dedicated to freaky guitar rock, and that mindset ruled until the latter half of the '90s, when the well had started to run dry, as labels like Sundazed issued the complete recorded works of obscure garage rockers who had released only one single during their lifetimes. Around this time, collectors -- including many third-generation music fanatics raised in the era of CD reissues rather than record fairs -- began to favor the soft sunshine pop of the late '60s, when square vocal groups started to get hip and record trippy music. Bands like the Millennium, the Association, and Yellow Balloon became hip currency, as did producers like Curt Boettcher and songwriters like Paul Williams. This was close to anathema for the hardcore garage rock fiends because this was not rock & roll, it was pop music whose commercial aspirations failed. Nevertheless, most hardcore record geeks have a fondness for this stuff, since it's not only melodic and well produced, but it's terribly interesting to hear how underground ideas were borrowed and assimilated into mainstream music; often, it's as strange as it was in the underground, if not stranger. Fans of this breed of psychedelic pop were insatiable, and there was a certain thrill to the fact that it was hard to track down, since it was either issued in Japan, buried as album tracks on reissues, or never made it to CD at all. That's why Rhino Handmade's foray into the sound with Come to the Sunshine: Soft Pop Nuggets from the WEA Vaults and its companion release, Hallucinations: Psychedelic Pop Nuggets from the WEA Vaults, is so welcome -- while they're only available as limited editions (primarily sold via www.rhinohandmade.com), they're also the first widely available American samplers of this style. That alone would make them noteworthy, but what makes them essential (at least for hardcore record collectors), is that they're expertly done.

Tracklist:

 

1. Harpers Bizarre – Come To The Sunshine

2. Pat Shannon – Candy Apple, Cotton Candy

3. The Salt – A Whole Lot Of Rainbows

4. The Morning Glories – Love-In

5. Everly Brothers – Talking To The Flowers

6. The Munx – Our Dream

7. Lee Mallory – Take My Hand

8. The Association (2) – Come On In

9. The Vogues – Just What I've Been Looking For

10. The Looking Glass (2) – Silver And Sunshine (How Wonderful Is Our Love)

11. Anita Kerr – Happiness

12. Gas Company – If You Know What I Mean

13. The Cookies – Wounded

14. The Other Voices (2) – Hung Up On Love

15. The Tokens – For All That I Am

16. The Street Corner Society – Summer Days, Summer Nights

17. The Music Machine – Discrepency

18. The Holy Mackerel – Scorpio Red

19. Uncle Sound – Beverly Hills

20. Dino, Desi & Billy – Tell Someone That You Love Them

21. Addrisi Brothers – Time To Love

22. The Monkees – Someday Man

23. The Coronados – Trip To Loveland

24. The Gates Of Eden – No One Was There (Requiem)

 

***