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Rating: American psychedelia comes of age.
The Los Angeles band, led by Ken Williams, after the abrasive debut that was “I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night” in the same year, releases this authentic masterpiece of American music. The album opens with “The Great Banana Hoax”, psych-progressive in its seminal form and continues with a trio of magical potions, “Children Of Rain”, “Wind-Up Toys”, and “Antique Doll”, where the Electric Prunes mix the nascent English psychedelia with the emptiness of the desert and the melancholy of the great prairies… there are also more robust tracks, such as “It’s Not Fair”, a devious folk-country divertissement, as only the fellow countrymen Kaleidoscope could do, or “Dr. Do-Doog”, an eccentric psychotic and sick hyper-garage. But in my opinion, the most exciting moment is reached with “Hideaway”, where the quintet surrenders in a masterful epic ride, with Williams’ voice becoming serious and deep, duetting with Michael Weakley’s guitar slashes, both supported by a violent and uncompromising rhythm section, while a choir rises in the background that seems to come directly from a piece Morricone would have written to support the crucial moment of a duel… at sunset. The only off-key episode in the entire work is found in the lightweight “Big City”, but the tone soon rises with “Captain Glory”, a British-style vaudeville, carefree and irreverent, and explodes in the final “Long Day’s Flight”, which has nothing to envy to the best 13th Floor Elevators in terms of lucid madness.
The following year, in the midst of the Peace & Love season, the Electric Prunes will release the "pastoral" concept “Mass In F Minor”, featuring only Williams from the original band, and subsequently, history will see them in a sad downward spiral… but this “Underground” remains one of the masterpieces produced in the magical year of 1967.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
04 Antique Doll (03:13)
Antique Doll
(Annette Tucker / Nancie Mantz)
You have not changed your calendar for a hundred years
You've chosen to swim backwards through an ancient sea of tears
Today is not tomorrow but for you it's yesterday
Your future is your past where you can hide yourself away
Chorus
Sitting On a lilly pad of lonliness
Placing lipstick kisses on the wall
Sharing secret idols with your onliness
Oooh Antique Doll Antique Doll
Painting paper doilies through cold and bitter nights
You think you're really turning on when you turn on the lights
Your lover is a pillow from a sailor lost at sea
Who wrote his ship went down with him in 1963
Repeat Chorus
Your mother seems to wonder if you're living
Each night she makes you breathe upon a mirror
But there is no living without giving as you
Sit and watch your shadow disappear
Repeat chorus
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