{"id":12577,"date":"2017-04-17T05:30:16","date_gmt":"2017-04-17T09:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=12577"},"modified":"2017-04-17T07:06:52","modified_gmt":"2017-04-17T11:06:52","slug":"album-review-ultimate-spinach-behold-see-mono","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2017\/04\/17\/album-review-ultimate-spinach-behold-see-mono\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Ultimate Spinach &#8212; Behold &#038; See (Mono)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-12578\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/ultimate_spinach.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/ultimate_spinach.jpg 300w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/ultimate_spinach-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>At the time of its 1968 release, <strong>Ultimate Spinach<\/strong>&#8216;s <i>Behold &amp; See<\/i> suffered from critical backlash. Those brickbats were directed primarily at the ill-advised \u201cBosstown Sound\u201d marketing hype that surrounded the group. Considered on its own, <i>Behold &amp; See<\/i> is a worthwhile and oft-overlooked artifact of its era.<\/p>\n<p>Yet the flow of <i>Behold &amp; See<\/i> is diminished by poor sequencing; the two songs that open the disc are among the least distinguished here. \u201cGilded Lamp of the Cosmos\u201d sounds like Smith; \u201cVisions of Your Reality\u201d recalls mid-period <strong>Moby Grape<\/strong>. Trippy song titles notwithstanding, many of the songs on <i>Behold &amp; See<\/i> aren&#8217;t especially psychedelic; instead, they lean in a pastoral hippie direction. The longer, psych-flavored tracks are the best ones here. The extended \u201cMind Flowers\u201d is a credible stab at laid back, acid fuzz; it anticipates <strong>Hawkwind<\/strong>&#8216;s music\/poetry approach by a year or more.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-12580\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/ultspinach.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/ultspinach.png 300w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/ultspinach-150x150.png 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>Paradoxically, <i>Behold &amp; See<\/i>&#8216;s most musically interesting track is the one with the least imaginative title: the proto-fusion \u201cJazz Thing\u201d features a lovely running musical dialogue between electric piano and vibraphone, and the most tasteful guitar solo on the entire record. The song&#8217;s flute and bass(!) solos are a treat as well. Despite its length \u2013 a shade over nine and half minutes \u2013 \u201cJazz Thing\u201d is a well-structured tune that shifts musical gears a few times. \u201cSuite: Genesis of Beauty\u201d showcases church organ and electric piano and ethereal harmony vocals. Despite the chaos its title portends, \u201cFifth Horseman of the Apocalypse\u201d is about as high energy as your average <strong>Grateful Dead<\/strong> cut.<\/p>\n<p>At over 50 minutes, <i>Behold &amp; See<\/i> is atypically long for a single LP; judicious editing might have made for a stronger, more consistent album. But on balance, the album&#8217;s best moments more than offset its weaker ones. Sundazed&#8217;s reissue features a crystalline monaural mix, and the vinyl is pressed in spinach-themed green.<\/p>\n<p><em>An edited version of this review appeared previously in<\/em> Goldmine Magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the time of its 1968 release, Ultimate Spinach&#8216;s Behold &amp; See suffered from critical backlash. Those brickbats were directed primarily at the ill-advised \u201cBosstown Sound\u201d marketing hype that surrounded [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12578,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,64,65,73],"tags":[2086,3027],"class_list":["post-12577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rawk","category-reissue","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-sundazed","tag-ultimate-spinach","cat-62-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12577"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12581,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12577\/revisions\/12581"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}