The Electric Prunes
Underground

THE REVIEW

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.