MMOSS
I

“Follow the white rabbit...”

Who knows if, while writing Alice in Wonderland or Through the Looking-Glass, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (alias Lewis Carroll), ever imagined the future and cross-influence of these works. The imaginative and kaleidoscopic aura that pervades them, the various interpretations and hidden symbolism, have made them a puzzle for many, influencing “artists” of sometimes opposing backgrounds and fields. From painting to figurative art, to our discursive domain, music, the joyful, unsettling, and nonsensical imagery born from Carroll's pen is still a source of otherworldly visions.

Even if the first blatant citation of Alice can be found in the “White Rabbit” of Jeffersonian memory, it is in perfidious Albion that the seeds of Carrollian imagery take root the most. In the years of psychedelic discovery, London and the whole musical England are nothing but a material transfiguration of Alice's world. The streets are teeming with characters who have little to envy to the Queen of Hearts or the Mad Hatter: Arnold Layne, Lewis Tollani, Mr. Kite, Timothy Chase, Baron Saturday, Mr. Pinnodmy alongside who knows how many others, real or fictitious. Perhaps only one of the main actors of that era managed to make many aspects of Carrollian poetry his own, paying too high a price. Obviously, I am referring to the first Barrett, and the early Floyd, standard-bearers of that tremulous and weak vision, lasting the span of a year, in which such imagery was fused with space flights, urban anxieties, mental journeys short-circuited between present, past, and future.

The MMOSS, though from Boston, achieve a small musical miracle: remember and revive, but without reviving and exhuming, the good Syd and all that 66/67 London atmosphere. Adding a pinch of native protest folk and some open-eyed visions, offspring of similar characters like the Grateful Dead. The usual things, you might say. A little yes and a little no, I say.

Certainly, you won't find the philosopher's stone of future music in the grooves of this “I”, but just a handful of songs now more pop now more psychedelic, practically perfect. With the aggravating factor of a flute tossed in there. Yes, I know many will have already stopped reading. Don't worry, no Ian Anderson effect, no piping for 6 hours on one leg; just simple accompaniment, without even venturing into medieval troubadour folk stuff. For this alone, anyone who cares about that music should love them immediately, period. The icing on the cake is the relatively short duration, about 2 minutes and a bit more, of most of the tracks.

A few titles at random, just to make you understand: “Grow Down” is circular and hypnotic, “Woolgathering” is animated by the presence of Grace Slick, “Molly Molasses” between Twink, John Lennon, and the Coral, “And Do I Set My Bow In The Clouds” is the fourth planet from the Sun, before the end; “Maryanne Rising” is a small nugget hit like the Kinks, “Make It Well” could have been written by Yanez de Gomera, while sailing on Mompracem with the phaser attached. I'll stop here and we're just a little over halfway through the album. I've said everything.

May The Circle Remain Unbroken.