Gordon Alexander – Gordon’s Buster

If the name Curt Boettcher means anything to you, prepare to get excited. Recorded around the same time as Boettcher’s masterpiece Begin by The Millennium, Gordon’s Buster is a bit of a stranger release, and a bit less interesting orchestrally than Begin. You wouldn’t really be able to tell this from the A Side though. Speckled with fairly lame pop songs (although Topanga and Autumn Is A Bummer are pretty good, and they’re all pretty listenable) with kind of odd titles (you’d expect a song called A Bunch Of Us Were Sitting Around A Candle In San Francisco Getting Stoned And I Hope You’re There Next Time to be at least a bit interesting, right?), I sat listening waiting for some Boettcher magic to happen. So far I’m unimpressed, I thought, until I flipped the record and things started to get weird; let’s just say I can see why this the less commercial of Boettcher’s releases (aside from track titles). Thinking In Indian Again sounds like a slightly Zappa influenced psych pop song with lyrics like “I like to fly with my middle eye on a beam to the end of my brain” and some really, really cool fuzz guitar lines. Puppet Theatre 23 is pretty cool too, with lyrics like “a painting trip by a dude named Clay” and tremolo guitar, orchestral swells, and that awesomely cheesy California brass section thing. “Why is the flower pot broken, why do the flowers grow so tall,” Gordon yells. Super cool. “I’m standing inside of my brain,” Gordon yells. Super cool. One Real Spins Free also sounds kind of Zappa influenced, like if cheesy California soft-psych could be proggy: changing tempos and rhythms, more orchestral swells and California brass section pops, etc. It also ends in a cool, Sgt. Peppers-ish mind-bending orchestral swell. And then on to my favorite track here, Windy Wednesday. First of all it starts with studio chatter (which is always a good thing). Also, the vocals are DRENCHED in echo and reverb, which also always wins me over. The vocal melody kind of makes the song seem like a west coast soft-psych version of Letzte Tage – Letzte Nacht-era Popol Vuh, that kind of Opera-New-Age kind of deal. Then there’s Miss Mary which is also super cool, with the background vocal chants reminiscent of Pow R. Toc H. by Pink Floyd and super cool west coast fuzz lines. Also like the vocal rhythm where he keeps repeating the last words. The more I listen to this album though, the more I like it all. Still prefer the B Side, but the A Side is more than listenable now. Anyways…

Enjoy!

“Tune into the wavelength of the sonic vye-buh-ray-shuns of my song”

UPDATE: I think I fixed the link!