Love
Four Sail

The year 1969 was both exciting and tragic at the same time. The hippie season reached its zenith at Woodstock, at the moment it seemed that its ideals would soon triumph. However, while the conflict in Southeast Asia entered its bloodiest phase, dark clouds were also gathering in the Californian realm. Charles Manson and the events at Altamont revealed the dark side, the nemesis of that season, and the most exciting works of that unrepeatable momentum displayed the stigmata of an almost "fin de siècle" atmosphere. "Four Sail" indisputably belongs to that select elite.
In all of this, talking about Arthur Lee may seem forced. If it is true that Love was the West Coast equivalent of the Velvet Underground for innovation, impact, and composing talent, it is nonetheless undeniable that before putting the group so deeply into the historical context of the time, it should be remembered that Love has always been an anomaly within the scene, although they had baptized numerous artists, from the Doors to Jimi Hendrix.

Beautifully perched in a gloomy mansion on the hills of Los Angeles, lost between heroin, LSD, and Lee’s hallucinatory visions, the group never ventured outside of California. Their contribution was exquisitely musical, as the first three albums shone with dazzling sixties veneers, uniting in an astounding syncretism psychedelia, garage, blues, flamenco, pop, and jazz, culminating in the orchestral pastiche of "Forever Changes," an album for which the definition of masterpiece is redundant. The great public’s indifference to an objectively alien sound mixture, and the tensions within the band, pushed Lee to "break ranks." To honor the last album due to Elektra (the title is a disguised "for sale"), the despotic singer/guitarist recruited a power trio along the lines of the "Experience" of his former disciple from Seattle, composed of the virtuoso drummer George Suranovich, the bassist Frank Fayad, and especially the magnificent guitarist Jay Donnellan.
The secret of "Four Sail" lies in the alchemy between the variety of solutions, both lysergic and aggressive, contributed by the new band to Lee's sumptuous and visionary songwriting. The magic of "Forever Changes," suspended between dreamlike arrangements and iridescent accelerations, is dissolved: from amphetamine fumes emerges a darker and more aggressive sound, shaped by Donnellan's Hendrixian six-string. The initial "August" is exemplary in this sense: a gentle melody is soon scarred by snarling and extended guitar duels in acid blues style, supported by a pulsating rhythm section and bloody vocals and choruses. On the same tracks run the jazz-tinged fury of "Good Times", the varied western canvas of "Singing Cowboy", the incendiary whirl of "Talking In My Sleep", while "Robert Montgomery" blends an original psychedelia halfway between pop’s linearity and sumptuous instrumental incandescence.
However, there are also fragments where Lee's sensitivity reigns: the delightful "I'm With You" lightly speeds by on almost bossa nova rhythms, the soft country-rock "Your Friend of Mine - Neil’s Song" evokes heroin's ghost as in the famous "Signed D.C.," while "Nothing" forges dazzling pop hallucinations. Finally, on the ballads "Dream" and "Always See Your Face" Donnellan chisels pressing solos that cleave melancholic and fairy-tale atmospheres, evoked by soft and baroque moods, as well as that voice perpetually out of time.

All of this is the last great album labeled Love: before the tunnel of the 70s swallowed Arthur Lee.