TOMBSTONE VALENTINE

Released in 1970, WIGWAM's second album "Tombstone Valentine" uniquely stands on its own as not only a precursor to what was still to come but also a wonderful album bubbling over with soul searching folk/psych/prog leanings. The first few WIGWAM albums are truly wonderful and generally cover a wide range of musical ground. This album is a collection is 11 tracks with a heavy focus on folk-blues-rock songs giving at times allusion to the symphonic prog the later albums would explore. Hard to exactly peg down this album but definitely hear some PROCOL HARUM and a piece of maybe folk-era HOELDERLIN. "Tombstone Valentine" introduced us to new WIGWAM members Jukka Tolonen (guitarist) and bassist/composer Pekka Pohjola. WIGWAM were lead by both Jukka Gustavson (organ, piano) and vocalist England's Jim Pembroke'. Overall this is an excellent album that showed WIGWAM in early form performing unconventional and original selection of folk/prog and clearly shows a young band searching for a chemistry that began to gel on this album.