Ted Lucas made a masterpiece. Firstly of the ’70s, after jettisoning a string of promising rock bands and sustaining himself as an “unique instrumentalist” for Motown, the songwriter and guitarist determined to offer industrial success one other go. He reduce a six-song acoustic demo in his Detroit attic on the behest of Warner Bros, submitting it in early 1972. He believed so strongly he’d be signed that he satisfied the good psychedelic visualizer Stanley Mouse to offer him cowl artwork as soon as supposed for the late Jimi Hendrix. However that deal by no means occurred, so Lucas—three years later, in September 1975—self-released his self-titled solo debut, again when placing out your individual stuff usually meant the music was stillborn.
Over the past half-century, although, these 9 songs have slowly impressed a second life, prompting OM, as it’s usually known as, to be reissued a number of instances. The definitive version arrived final yr by way of Third Man, steadfast champions of deserving Detroit obscurities. In case you had been to ask me for one advice within the crowded area of so-called “private-press people,” the place the esoteric and enigmatic is commonly nearly as good as money, I’d nearly all the time counsel OM, an instantly accessible however deeply uncanny report of stoner hymns, existential lullabies, and white-hot acoustic guitar enjoying. It feels to me like lighting a hearth on a snowy day, balancing sturdy espresso with sticks-and-stems weed, and letting your thoughts wander to your most nice reminiscences.
No rating but, be the primary so as to add.
However until you dedicated to deep Discogs investments or grainy YouTube transfers, OM appeared like the start and finish for Lucas, a blessed providing devoid of context. He had made this album and vanished, like some bearded angel transferring too quick to see. That thriller is over now: Pictures of Life gathers 32 songs made within the 15-year interval round OM, combining these rarities floating round on stray 7”s with a partial excavation of the huge archive Lucas left when he died in 1992. Alongside Mike Dutkewych’s good and delicate liner notes, the music portrays Lucas as a preternaturally gifted tunesmith hamstrung by his capability to decide to a single sound or path.
Maybe too good for his personal good, Lucas strikes amongst jangling psychedelia, heartsick pastorals, and radio-ready rock, as if without end looking for a method out of his attic studio or his mother and father’ spare bed room. There are songs right here that not solely rival one of the best of OM but additionally rank as misplaced Nuggets and even missed hits from some Time-Life compilation. If OM captured Lucas as one of many sweetest singers ever trapped within the folk-rock dustbin, Pictures of Life reveals him as a sophisticated artist who might make most any hook sound easy.
Pictures of Life divides Lucas’ profession into three chronological and free stylistic classes, every nabbing an LP of its personal. The primary, Unusual Mysterious Sounds, finds him pinballing amongst three bands in a five-year span. Lucas launched his OM label to launch the nice, fuzzy 1966 single “Excessive Time,” from his psych quintet the Spike-Drivers, earlier than he hijacked a cope with Atlantic in favor of a slot on Reprise. The Spike-Drivers reduce tracks at Chess in Chicago and with Tom Dowd in New York—establishments of the period that reinforce how a lot potential they’d. Once they cut up, Lucas launched a duo, the Misty Wizards, with fellow former Driver, Richard Keelan; their troika of acoustic tracks right here, all captured throughout a 1968 soundcheck in Michigan, are a revelation. They sing a bit of like Simon & Garfunkel or Crosby, Stills, & Nash, their preparations grounded in blue-collar actuality however dosed with acid.