ULTIMATE SPINACH III

The third and final Ultimate Spinach studio album belongs to the band in name only, all members save singer/guitarist Barbara Hudson having departed by this point. Hudson’s vocals are still quite striking, but the rest of the lineup consisted of journeyman studio musicians and MGM label stringers, and the tenor of the music is far removed from the commercial-leaning psych pop the band had churned out on their previous records.

The most significant departure was band leader, multi-instrumentalist and chief songwriter Ian Bruce-Douglas. The loss was apparent right away, with the band electing to cover the 1964 Reflections doo-wop hit “(Just Like) Romeo and Juliet” as the opening track.

Things would get a little better after that, but not much. Gone are the whiny psych guitar forays and extended compositions, replaced by blatantly commercial rock numbers with only a hint of the progressive sound the band had built their name on. By the middle of the record the group fell back on simple and only modestly embellished slow blues with the piano/guitar instrumental “Eddie's Rush”, a slightly more modern yet still blues-based “Strange-Life Tragicomedy” and uninspired vocal harmonies on “Happiness, Child”. The album closes with the guitar-driven generic rock number “The World has Just Begun”. That may have been true, but for the band the end had already begun.

The only track even remotely akin to the band’s better and early work is the heavy prog “Strange-Life Tragicomedy”, but even this falls short with its brevity and oddly-placed three- part male vocal harmonies toward the end.

I’m not a very big fan of this band anyway, but at least their first two albums can fairly confidently by classified as psych, and nearly as confidently as progressive. This one fails on both those points, and will only be of interest to hardcore fans of the band or those who really dig Hudson’s voice (and maybe not even them since she only sings lead on about half the tracks). This record is out-of-print today and probably should be. Two stars for collectors, but that’s all.

peace

While Behold & See will never become a favorite of mine it does feature some incredible material and some iffy material as well (I could live without the harmonica bits and quasi-church choir like vocals). It's plain to see their third and final album is truly a letdown in every way. In fact at this point it's Ultimate Spinach in all but name only as it's a completely new lineup with only Barbara Hudson being the only original member and she doesn't even appear on all cuts. Jeff "Skunk" Baxter of Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan fame appears not that it really made much of a difference. I guess Jeff Lorber was still trying to milk the Boston scene for what it was worth. Anyways if you enjoyed their first two albums, forget it here. Psychedelia gone in favor of mediocre 1970s post- psychedelic rock (and it was 1969). I realize psychedelia was on the decline in 1969 and the Beatles and Stones had no trouble transitioning out of psych due to the massive success they had in the pre-psychedelic era so they knew how to successfully exit psychedelia. Too many bands associated with psych were hitting a brick wall by this point and does that show with this version of Ultimate Spinach. Forget those organs and fuzz guitars and hear that middling '70s rock done by too many undistinguished groups. Lucky for "Skunk" Baxter he would earn far greater success with Steely Dan and the Doobies (regardless how you might feel of their music). With Ultimate Spinach stick with their first two, it's all you need from them.