By this stage in the game, we might well have assumed that the glory-days of ‘60s garage/psych excavations are well and truly over (at least with regards to the US and UK). I mean, surely by now even the most dogged collectors and researchers of such material must have felt their brains finally turning to mush as they cue up that only-known-copy acetate of the 84,000th gang of Arkansas teenagers to knock out a shaky Bo Diddley rip-off in 1966 and/or the 604th mob of swinging London toy-town chancers. The well is dry, the dust is toxic, the ruins are earmarked for demolition, and the vast majority of more canny comp-lords have long since moved on to play and pillage amongst the relatively untouched realms of regional ‘70s heavy rock.

(Expect that market in turn to bottom out in the next year or two, given the speed with which it’s being exploited, and, with outsider punk, post-punk and ‘80s goth already being strip-mined from the other direction, where can they run to after that? God help the poor lost souls, they might have to start listening to music from non-English speaking countries, or stuff that’s not white guitar rock, if you can imagine such a thing..)

BUT, we would do well to remember the first rule of any form of retrospective cultural obsession: THERE IS ALWAYS MORE.

Just as the last stragglers in ‘60s-ville prepare to pack their bags and move on though, Ace Records have come out of nowhere and dropped ‘Golden State Psychedelia’, a collection of largely unheard recordings made on-spec for potential sale to labels and distributors at Leo Kulka’s Golden State Recorders studio in San Francisco between ’66 and ’69. The only familiar name here to genre fans will be The Gants (of “I Wonder” non-fame), with the other tracks consisting of largely or entirely unknown outfits, and - take a deep breath here folks – the bulk of this stuff is *really good*.

Beginning in eye-opening fashion with a grizzled, proto-Hawkwind intro burn, The Goody Box’s ‘Blow Up’ explodes into a delightfully punkoid Standells stomp, and many of the following numbers here provide a similarly thrilling bolt from the blue for long-jaded garage fans, running the gamut from The Carnival’s hyperactive choral psyche (which sounds a bit like The Fifth Dimension played at the wrong speed) to the bleary-eyed dawn-after-a-night-lost-in-the-forest atmos of The Bristol Boxkite’s superbly desolate ‘Sunless Night’.

Lashings of PROPER PSYCHE follows, as the faux-communal freak out vibes of The Immediate Family’s ‘Rubaiyat’ open up like a goldleaf sunflower into a chorus melody that could slay saints; joint male/female vox enliven the punked up Jefferson Airplane stylings of The Short Yellow, whilst the aptly named Celestial Hysteria come on like a witchy, female-fronted Iron Butterfly. Actually, it is the Airplane influence can be felt most strongly felt throughout this comp – as I suppose is only natural, given the time and place in which these tracks were recorded. If nothing else, this seemingly encouraged the participation of a number of ballsy, deep-voiced female vocialists in the bands represented here, which is certainly a welcome development, with The Seventh Dawn’s ‘Don't Worry Me’ in particular standing out as a dead ringer for a lost Great Society recording.

Best of all though is ‘Fuck For Peace’, as performed by “Magician” – an absolutely first rate fucked up, drug-freak hipster nightmare blaster, about as wilfully uncommercial as you’d expect of a group who seemingly rocked up at a pro studio in 1968 and start dropping the F-word over blasts of fuzz-tone that sound like a cat frying against an electrified wire fence.

I’d continue with “…and that’s just the first half!”, but, to be honest with you, the track list here is somewhat front-loaded; additional cuts from many of the acts mentioned above betray a more-of-the-same / deliberate B-side quality, but nonetheless, at least two thirds of the cuts here are keepers, which is a frankly astonishing feat for a never-before-heard garage comp in 2016.

Historically speaking, the Golden State material presents a fascinating insight into a sub-set of professional-ish musicians (well, I mean, not regional high schoolers at any rate) who still had one foot in the producer/studio owner-guided, Top 40-orientated pop scene, whilst the toes of the other curled outward toward the new world of the ostensibly ‘underground’ psychedelic ballroom culture that was exploding just across town, bridging the transition toward rootsy, album-orientated Woodstock-era rock that would render these kind of colourful, three minute psychesploitation smilers a terminally square anachronism by the close of this comp's timeframe.

Happily, the results of this aesthetic mix-up proves exciting and unpredictable enough to delight and confound even today, serving to remind us – if only for a minute or two here and there - just how rich and unhinged and exciting all that Nuggets/Pebbles stuff was back when we heard it for the first time all those years ago.

Sounding at its best moments like ‘Epitaph For a Legend’ force-fed through a letterbox of jittery Nuggets bounce, this is probably my favourite psyche comp since Now-Again’s fabulous Forge Your Own Chains, and come to think of it, that one was mainly a ‘70s affair, so… I think that makes this the best purely ‘60s comp in donkey’s years. Just remember, the next time you don't quite have the heart to give ‘Back From The Grave # 15' that third listen it probably deserves - THERE IS ALWAYS MORE.

Buy directly from Ace Records.

Labels: best of 2016, comps & reissues, garage