{"id":30642,"date":"2026-01-27T05:30:56","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T10:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=30642"},"modified":"2026-01-28T07:55:58","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T12:55:58","slug":"album-review-eternitys-children-s-t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/27\/album-review-eternitys-children-s-t\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Eternity’s Children — s\/t"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"One of the idiosyncratic qualities of pop music \u2013 or at least of the critical examination thereof \u2013 is the post-dated creation of subgenres. I\u2019m thinking here of freakbeat, garage-punk and the like. Those terms didn\u2019t exist at the time, but they\u2019re used retroactively to describe and categorize music made ages ago. Most artists bristle at being pigeonholed, but there’s undeniable value in classifying music, at least to some degree: we can\u2019t listen to all of it, so the occasional guidepost can help.<\/p>\n

\u201cSunshine pop\u201d is another of those. \u201cBaroque pop\u201d might have gained some traction as a label when the Left Banke was making records. The Association, The Millennium and so on; they made the stuff that was gentle, refined, sophisticated and often damn catchy.<\/p>\n

Eternity\u2019s Children fall into that bag as well. Few then or now would expect such a group to come out of Mississippi, especially in the mid \u201860s. But they did. The group moved to the port city of Biloxi to make it big (ha) and did in fact gain a measure of fame (and, more importantly, steady work). They also landed a deal with A&M Records, a label then known for Herb Alpert, Sergio Mendes, Boyce & Hart and others. Not the rocking-est stable, but quality indeed.<\/p>\n

Eternity\u2019s Children managed to cut a pair of albums. Their self-titled debut came out in 1968, by which time sunshine pop was at its peak, soon to eclipse (so to speak). The album was produced by Curt Boettcher (the man responsible for Sagittarius and other wide-screen pop gems) and Keith Olsen (of the Music Machine(!) and later producer of Fleetwood Mac). All involved did a superb job, and for fans of the style, the cult favorite Eternity\u2019s Children<\/em> is a fascinating document, an exemplar of the style.<\/p>\n

The band goes all bossa nova on \u201cMy Happiness Day,\u201d but for most of the rest of the ten-track LP, it’s rays of melancholy sunshine, with a bit of bouncy pop on cuts like \u201cLifetime Day.\u201d (The end bit of the song rocks out in an unexpectedly psychedelic way.) Fans of any of the aforementioned acts \u2013 and of, say, the Cowsills \u2013 will enjoy this preserved-in-amber music.<\/p>\n

Both sides of the group\u2019s third single \u2013 \u201cMrs. Bluebird\u201d and \u201cLittle Boy\u201d are included here. In May \u201868, that 45 r.p.m. release made it to no. 59 on Billboard<\/i>\u2019s chart, and a bit higher on the Cashbox<\/i> chart.<\/p>\n

High Moon\u2019s lovingly reissued set comes in a super-sturdy gatefold sleeve that recreates the original album art. And the gatefold opens to reveal photos, ephemera and \u2013 most important \u2013 a well-researched essay by Steve Stanley, one that charts the history of this overlooked band.<\/p>\n

Click here for a quick look at the second album<\/a> from Eternity\u2019s Children, also newly reissued.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the idiosyncratic qualities of pop music \u2013 or at least of the critical examination thereof \u2013 is the post-dated creation of subgenres. I\u2019m thinking here of freakbeat, garage-punk […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30643,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,64,65,73],"tags":[5836],"class_list":["post-30642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop","category-reissue","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-eternitys-children","cat-51-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30642","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=30642"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30712,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30642\/revisions\/30712"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}