Aural Fixations

THE BEVIS FROND
Bevis Through the Looking Glass
(Rubric)
Rubric continues its slow trickle of reissues of the Bevis Frond catalog with Bevis Through the Looking Glass, the Frond's first outtakes and rarities record. Originally issued in 1987 in a limited vinyl edition of 500 copies, the album was subsequently reissued by Reckless, the Frond's American record company at the time. The material dates from the period of his first pair of albums Miasma and Inner Marshland, thus, at this time, the Frond still consisted only of songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Nick Saloman and his trusty home portastudio. So the fidelity isn't the greatest, though it's the best Saloman could make it given the limitations of the technology. Not that it matters—Frond devotees, like Guided by Voices fans, have long accepted dodgy recording quality as part of the mystique. (Though Saloman never made a fetish of lo-fi the way GbV has over the years.) Anyway, the material found herein may not be the best Saloman had ever created, as evidenced by his exclusion of the songs on his "official" records, but it's still psychedelic rock of considerable merit. Well, maybe not all of it; the epics "1970 Home Improvements" (a largely improvised instrumental spun out of the Stooges' "1970") and "The Shrine" (which took up an entire side of the original vinyl) don't really justify the extraordinary lengths, though both have their moments. While the Frond's psychedelic jams and mystical wanderings often provide the highlights of his standard records, here they're just tedious enough to make it understandable why they were left on the shelf.

The shorter pieces hold up much better. Most of the tracks here are guitar-heavy rockers; "Rat in a Waistcoat" (inspired by a story by H.P. Lovecraft), "Express Man" (inspired by British cult act the Groundhogs' version of the blues), and "Song For the Sky" (an instrumental tribute to one of Saloman's heroes, Spirit leader Randy California) highlight Saloman's ability to include lots of six-string heroics without losing focus on the song itself. The Frond's expert touch with melody-fresh pop tunes isn't given short shrift either; the distortion-scarred "Now You Know," the propulsive "I Can't Get Into Your Scene" and the gorgeous "In Another Year" (Saloman's contribution to the rock & roll catalog of nuclear anxiety songs) would fit comfortably on any classic Frond album. Saloman also includes the dirty organ instrumental "Soot," just to prove he doesn't always revolve around electric guitar. The record ends with a charming curiosity: "Alistair Jones" is Saloman's take on Syd Barrett's "Arnold Layne," written and recorded when the artist was only 14. "Alistair Jones" and the witty liner notes—a fake and acerbic catalog of psych rock rarities that looks back with ambivalence to Saloman's previous career as a secondhand record dealer—put an appropriate capper on the album, letting us know not to take everything too seriously. Bevis Through the Looking Glass isn't the shiniest jewel on the Frond's crown, but it's a tribute to Nick Saloman's talent that his outtakes are still better than most contemporary psych rockers' standard issue. Michael Toland [buy it]