The Pretty Things - Emotions

Fontana Records

The late 1960s seem to be providing a crisis of identity for a hoarde of British Invasion/Mod groups. The Beatles and the Stones have both embossed themselves with half-hearted psychedelia, The Who have blessed us with what is the only tribute to Pirate Radio that American audiences will ever hear (though never truly comprehend), and Ray Davies is still using the Kinks as his vehicle to serve up his in-the-between-spaces songs on a silver platter. And while they have a smaller audience to work with, The Pretty things are the rule, not the exception. 

"Emotions", a well-intentioned effort to add some colour to the old garage with Day-Glo paint, comes across as the creation of a group of musically competent yet awkward and unsure teenage boys. It's not hard to picture them wringing their hands and stuttering through unconfidently presented ideas as they shuffle anxiously around the producer, never gaining the courage to look him in the eye. 

The group approaches psychedelia not yet as something they are interested in, but as something that is expected of them so they can keep up with the times. The whole album feels misshapen, like an unattended lump of clay, and ends up just as colourless. 

The string and horn arrangements were apparently added last minute to flesh-out the album by producer Steve Rowland, and it isn't hard to tell at all. The strings are pushy and the horns add distended layers that I wish someone would just cut off already. Inconveniently-timed line-up changes certainly didn't help make it seem like the band knew what they were doing. 

"Death of a Socialite" is reaching for the same story-telling heights that the Kinks have reached, but it lacks a good mock-up of Ray Davies' writing style coupled with oddly placed Cream influences. "Children" tries to go in the macabre direction "Death" was too afraid to, bur the lyrical team of Wally Waller, Phil May and Dick Taylor all seem to have forgotten what they were talking about halfway through. All the sarcastically sanguine song has going for it is that it's been emblazoned with some sprightly vocal harmonies, ones that are painfully underutilized on the rest of the record. 

Outside of the first two tracks, "Emotions" has ill-fated ideas on what it's going to sound like. There's insipid soul and musical theatre melodrama on "The Sun", the undeserving sickly-sweet romantic atmosphere given to "House of Ten", the attempt at recreating the baroque of the Stones' "Lady Jane" on "Growing in My Mind", and the rockabilly/garage throwback mix of "Photograph"--trying to make a leather jacket look more darling by adding lace trim. 

Our closer is "Tripping", an attempt at putting the listener in the shoes of one of those Arts & Entertainment critics--the kind who think every unique artistic endeavor is completed with the aid of drugs. It manages to be the most musically uninspired drug song I've ever heard. I guess they weren't feeling up to the challenge, leaving the album completely, utterly peckish. 

Rating: 3/5