Jacco Gardner
Cabinet Of Curiosities

It might be a cliché, but sometimes it's absolutely true that a picture says more than a thousand words. And it's a pity that in today's music scene not many artists try or manage to communicate through the album artwork, the music they have composed.

This is not the case with the debut of Jacco Gardner, a 24-year-old Dutchman, whose cover image perfectly encapsulates the feelings experienced while listening to the album. A child in a fire-red raincoat, lost in a forest that is both fairy-tale-like and eerily remote, all moss and conifers, nose pointed upwards, gazing at the sky. A perfect depiction of Gardner's childlike, almost naïve approach to '60s psych-pop. If someone already thought of the mad hatter Syd Barrett, they've hit the mark.
A blessing and a curse for at least four generations of listeners and musicians, the good Syd continues to fascinate new audiences, both during his Pink Floyd era and the subsequent three solo albums. This is precisely due to that childlike carefree attitude he applied to the burgeoning world of psychedelic introspection. An unmatched balance between strict Victorian legacies and the freedom embraced with the enthusiasm and recklessness of a child. Needless to say, however, that the good Jacco only manages to take the mind back to Syd and that vibrant period of British music, and serves more as a reminder for the forgetful, rather than an attempt to modernize those sounds.

Jacco played and recorded almost everything by himself, and it must be admitted that the meticulous work done on the sounds and melodies is phenomenal. The opening track "Clear The Air", with its psychedelic tail, is the almost perfect union between early Floyd and Donovan; "Where Will You Go" drags us into a dreamlike land between today's Albion and its mythical sister, Avalon; the title track is an instrumental psych folk lament worthy of an anthology.
Thus, an album of crystalline '60s pop, with prog-like excursions ("The Riddle"), and medieval-flavored psych folk ("The One Eyed King", "Watching The Moon"), as well as at least two small gems: "Lullaby" a solo Syd-like spin-off (but with a mind of its own) and "Puppets Dangling", a blend of the aforementioned influences.

Be careful, the degree of appreciation for this album can vary greatly depending on how much of these sounds you've digested over the years; it might fascinate you as much as it might nauseate you due to its sheer faithfulness to the sources.