{"id":29172,"date":"2025-04-08T05:30:50","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T09:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=29172"},"modified":"2025-04-08T09:05:51","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T13:05:51","slug":"album-review-lotti-golden-motor-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/08\/album-review-lotti-golden-motor-cycle\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Lotti Golden — Motor-Cycle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Singer-songwriter Lotti Golden released her debut album in 1969, and a remarkable debut it was. But Motor-Cycle<\/em> largely disappeared without a trace, failing to make the impact it so richly deserved to make. The record went out of print, and \u2013 save for a German CD reissue in 2010 \u2013 would remain unavailable for more than a half century. A new vinyl reissue reintroduces Motor-Cycle<\/i> to modern-day audiences.<\/p>\n

For those unfamiliar with Golden\u2019s artistry, reading the word \u201csinger-songwriter\u201d and seeing the year 1969, it\u2019s likely that a certain set of preconceptions come to mind. That era was, after all, the time of the singer-songwriter. Laura Nyro<\/a> and Carole King were in the process of creating some of their best work. And fellow New Yorker Lotti Golden does share some surface similarities with those acclaimed artists. But there\u2019s quite a bit more going on within the grooves of Motor-Cycle<\/i>.<\/p>\n

The nine songs on the album form an autobiographical, even conceptual work. That alone would make Motor-Cycle<\/em> remarkable, as in 1969 there had been few if any concept albums by female artists. But the individual songs also showcase a dazzling array of styles, held together by the narrative approach. While \u201cMotor-Cycle Michael\u201d has a hypnotic, tribal beat that places it somewhere among the period\u2019s psychedelic soul offerings, its arrangement has a feel redolent of some of Jerry Wexler\u2019s work with Aretha Franklin. That shouldn\u2019t be wholly surprising, as the album was released on Atlantic Records. But knowing that it was produced by Bob Crewe \u2013 never the hippest cat in the music business \u2013 should raise an eyebrow or two.<\/p>\n

The song is eight-plus minutes long, moving through multiple sections. That kind of ambition in commendable, especially when applied to a first-rate song. But it is also a bit puzzling: opening an album with a lengthy cut isn\u2019t exactly a commercial approach. The song develops into a two-chord vamp that recalls Aretha\u2019s \u201cRespect,\u201d but something much darker and moodier is going on here; the song feels like a wide-screen take on the vibe one would find in The Jaynetts\u2019 mysterious \u201cSally Go Round the Roses.\u201d And a jazzy interlude \u2013 with crosstalk that sounds like partygoers in an uptown club \u2013 is sure to catch listeners off guard.<\/p>\n

If all of Motor-Cycle<\/em> sounded and felt like that track, it would be a noteworthy album. But that\u2019s not the case: the record heads in many different directions. \u201cGonna Fay\u2019s\u201d has a character that suggests what it might have sounded like had the Velvet Underground recorded in Muscle Shoals, with Laura Nyro instead of Nico. \u201cA Lot Like Lucifer (Celia Said Long Time Loser)\u201d has some brassy big band textures that again suggest Nyro at her best, but with a looser and more sinister undercurrent. \u201cThe Space Queens (Silky is Sad)\u201d has a big arrangement with bells, strings and kitchen sink.<\/p>\n

A highlight on this delightfully strange record, \u201cWho Are Your Friends\u201d presages the genre mashup trend by several decades. Imagine if The Shangri-Las, Velvets, Nyro and Aretha somehow formed a supergroup; it might sound something like this. The funkiness of \u201cGet Together (With Yourself)\u201d is the kind of thing that might have featured in a Bizarro World version of Rowan & Martin\u2019s Laugh-In<\/i> or any of the era\u2019s other eclectic variety shows, but didn\u2019t<\/i>, because, well, it\u2019s too weird.<\/p>\n

The ersatz secular gospel quality of some of Laura Nyro\u2019s work is echoed on \u201cYou Can Find Him,\u201d but Lotti Golden ultimately doesn\u2019t sound like anyone but herself. And big-picture, that\u2019s the central strength of Motor-Cycle<\/em>: it\u2019s a strikingly original work that stands both with and apart from the best of the era\u2019s music.<\/p>\n

Apparently, Atlantic didn\u2019t know what to do with the album. So what they did was pretty much nothing. It sank without a trace; none of the lengthy tracks \u2013 all clocking in over five minutes, some much longer \u2013 were edited down for potential single release. For her part, Golden would go on to an illustrious career, largely behind the scenes. Perhaps surprisingly \u2013 especially when considered after hearing Motor-Cycle<\/i> \u2013 her subsequent career would eventually focus on hip hop and electro. She would be a prime mover in those styles.<\/p>\n

The new reissue does things right: in addition to a faithful reproduction of the original LP\u2019s art, a 12×12 lyric sheet is included, as is a 32-page, full-size and full-color booklet packed with photos and text expanding on Lotti Golden\u2019s story. While perhaps not technically a \u201cdeluxe\u201d release, it\u2019s one of the most thoughtfully packaged vinyl releases I\u2019ve encountered in recent times.<\/p>\n

Motor-Cycle<\/i> remains as one of the most out-there offerings of the era, one that \u2013 had I known about it a bit sooner \u2013 I would have been pleased to explore in my soon-to-be-published book, What\u2019s the Big Idea: 30 Great Concept Albums<\/i>. That didn\u2019t happen, but I\u2019m pleased and honored to add Motor-Cycle<\/em> to my record collection. And I urge my musically adventurous readers to do the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Singer-songwriter Lotti Golden released her debut album in 1969, and a remarkable debut it was. But Motor-Cycle largely disappeared without a trace, failing to make the impact it so richly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29173,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,51,57,60,64,65,69,73],"tags":[5642],"class_list":["post-29172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-release","category-pop","category-psych","category-rb","category-reissue","category-review","category-soul","category-vinyl","tag-lotti-golden","cat-49-id","cat-51-id","cat-57-id","cat-60-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","cat-69-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29172","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=29172"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29212,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29172\/revisions\/29212"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}