The Complete ESP-Disk Recordings
Label: ESP-Disk
Rated: NONE
WorkNameSort: Complete ESP-Disk Recordings, The
Ready for rediscovery by sampler fetishists and retro folkies alike, The Complete ESP-Disk Recordings of North Dakota’s Pearls Before Swine is both precious and perverse. The product of singer, scribbler and songwriter Thomas D. Rapp, PBS’s hippie instrumentation, airhead vocals, and assertions that “no one can step inside your mind from behind” are purely the stuff of ’60s scrapbooks. Still, Rapp’s songs hold a certain power, whether in their spartan arrangements, persistently forlorn themes (“the portals of my mind”) or anti-war sentiments. This is psychedelic folk that is still potent, the sound of too many bong hits, attacking social injustice and laughing at the squares. Rapp critiques Nixon’s Silent Majority in “Uncle John” and composes for chamber strings in “Guardian Angels,” before delivering an absurdly straight version of Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne.”
This article appears in Jul 20-26, 2005.