ART — Supernatural Fairy Tales (review)

ART — Supernatural Fairy Tales album cover

Album · 1967 · Proto-Metal

3.5/5 · 2024-03-11
siLLy puPPy

Probably best known as the band that spawned Spooky Tooth, the simply named ART was just as much the band that emerged from The V.I.P.s, a Carlisle, England British blues mod band that existed from 1963 to 1967 and released a string of EPs and singles. One look at the super psychedelic album cover of ART’s one and only album SUPERNATURAL FAIRY TALES is a dead giveaway that this was released in the year of the world famous Summer of Love, that being 1967 when hippie ideas briefly infected the souls of the youth and giddy idealism reigned for a brief moment while tie-dye was the hippest thing since free LSD from the government.

While the V.I.P’s had a few lineup changes during its four year run, the group basically ended with Keith Emerson forming The Nice in 1967 and the other four members: Luther Grosvenor (guitar), Mike Harrison (vocals), Mike Kellie (drums) and Greg Ridley (bass) forming ART for one album before changing the band’s name to Spooky Tooth with the same exact lineup. While hailing from Britain, ART was clearly smitten with the West Coast psychedelic scene from California with a clear longing to join the San Francisco flower power cult. With one of the coolest album covers the 60s has to offer, the music itself is a bit lopsided with brilliant lysergic moments dampened by lame cover songs such as Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” only with the new title of “What’s That Sound.

Featuring nine tracks that added up to about 36 1/2 minutes, SUPERNATURAL FAIRY TALES delivered an album that was tailor-made for 1967 with heavy fuzz-laden guitar hooks, psychedelic detachment and warm melodic song structures., The album featured an interesting diverse array of tracks that varied from the harder guitar oriented rock sounds with period organ runs on the opening “I Think I’m Going Weird” to the stoner vibe folk of “Flying Anchors,” drumming circles run amok in “African Thing” and the clear Jimi Hendrix meets the Moody Blues style rocker in the title track. Add to that early experiments with dissonant vocals and angular guitar in “Rome Take Away Three” and you have the recipe for a veritable slice of 1967 in all its authenticity. Even some honky tonk piano finds its way into the track “Alive, Not Dead."

Interestingly although the album dabbled in all kinds of cutting edge production techniques, the album was completely recorded in mono which by 1967 was virtually a thing of the past. Comparisons to Spooky Tooth are inevitable but the next chapter of these four members would delve more into the early world of progressive rock that included more keyboard-based bluesy songs with a propensity for some of the gloomier come down styles that followed the euphoric high of the hippie years. ART by contrast was fully engaged in the psychedelic scene that would start to give way to the more complex musical expressions that would emerge in 1968 and beyond. SUPERNATURAL FAIRY TALES is essentially psychedelic pop wrapped up in fuzz guitar, clever trippy effects, classic 60s organ sounds and a touch of beat music percussive drive. The other track that doesn’t really fit in is yet another cover, this time “Come On Up” by The Young Rascals, a trait that was annoyingly too common in the 60s.

Overall ART delivered a decent if inconsistent set of psychedelic acid rock on this 1967 Summer of Love period piece. It’s a tad awkward as some of the tracks are practically hard rock while other drift in a plume of marijuana smoke but the album more or less delivered that feel good careful vibe that made effective 60s psychedelic rock. Only a slight detour from better things but i can’t say ART didn’t deliver a very cool album that wouldn’t have fit in at any particular juncture in history as it carries all that giddy optimism and idealism that made the whole Summer of Love so memorable. I’m surprised they’re not selling T-shirts of the album cover on Haight Street in San Francisco because it has to be the most representative artistic expression of the entire year of 1967. Yes, this is very dated but that's the point and if you want a very authentic slice of the year it was released then look no further.