{"id":26692,"date":"2024-01-13T05:30:05","date_gmt":"2024-01-13T10:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=26692"},"modified":"2024-01-04T08:18:01","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T13:18:01","slug":"album-review-the-ophelias-bare-bodkin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/13\/album-review-the-ophelias-bare-bodkin\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: The Ophelias — Bare Bodkin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"From a musical perspective, psychedelia\u2019s heyday was the period between the mid- and late 1960s. The style\u2019s influence, however, has endured since then in the form of various artists\u2019 reinterpretation of its values. Such creative giants as Robyn Hitchcock and Julian Cope \u2013 to name but two \u2013 have built upon the foundation of psych-rock, bending it to their own very distinctive ends. On a wider scale, the 1980s saw a resurgence of psych in the form of southern California\u2019s so-called Paisley Underground. But psych continued to bubble under in other, more far-flung corners.<\/p>\n

San Franciso has long been a creative musical hotbed, and in the pre-internet era in particular, the Bay Area developed its own brand of psych, perhaps less influenced by what was going on elsewhere than it wold have been a few years later. It was there in 1984 that The Ophelias began their musical odyssey. With the benefit of hindsight, the group’s music has hints of the approach and style of The Church, Siouxsie and the Banshees and other quality exponents of the second- (third?) wave psychedelic rock movement.<\/p>\n

During their initial run \u2013 ending around 1989 \u2013 The Ophelias released four albums. Disbanding in September of that year, the output ceased. But in 2017 group leader and primary songwriter Leslie Medford curated a collection titled Bare Bodkin<\/i>. Drawing from the group\u2019s released body of work as well as unreleased recordings, the well-received set provided a tidy overview\/distillation of The Ophelias\u2019 inimitable brand of psych rock. And the timing loosely coincided \u2013 likely not at all coincidentally \u2013 with the group\u2019s return to active duty.<\/p>\n

The thing was, at that point Bare Bodkin<\/i> was available only via streaming and YouTube.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the group signed with Independent Project Records, with plans to release Bare Bodkin on physical formats. The pandemic inevitably forced a delay, but a CD finally became available in 2022. Along the way the reconstituted group released four(!) albums of new material.<\/p>\n

Then in late 2023 a vinyl release of Bare Bodkin<\/i> became available. Luxuriously packaged in a colorful sleeve with historical essays, photos, download card and more, it\u2019s unquestionably the definitive version of the compilation. Group originals coexist nicely with tracks like the seething, sinister cover of The Kinks\u2019 \u201cWicked Annabella.\u201d The Ophelias\u2019 arrangement of that song suggests how Syd Barrett\u2019s Pink Floyd might have tacked the song.<\/p>\n

And the group\u2019s early breakthrough track \u2013 a reading of the folk song \u201cMister Rabbit\u201d is of course included as well; its nursery rhyme melody only encourages the Barrett references. But such comparisons do a disservice to the innately original group, and Bare Bodkin<\/i> serves as an ideal entry point into the curious world of this idiosyncratic and appealing group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From a musical perspective, psychedelia\u2019s heyday was the period between the mid- and late 1960s. The style\u2019s influence, however, has endured since then in the form of various artists\u2019 reinterpretation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26693,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,49,57,62,65,73],"tags":[5313],"class_list":["post-26692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-compilation","category-new-release","category-psych","category-rawk","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-the-ophelias","cat-19-id","cat-49-id","cat-57-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26694,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26692\/revisions\/26694"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}