THESE THINGS TOO

After two excellent progressive psych folk records PBS returns with an album that is often seen as their least appealing. Quite frankly, this is the PBS albums on which simply nothing seems to work! The production is blurry, the reverbs sound a bit cheap and somehow my thought always a bit distorted whilst listening to this album. The song-writing of Rapp seems to have less focus with some of his lines not making too much sense. The opening song is a direct confrontation with lyrics about Adolf Hitler, which doesn't really work for me. The two versions of Frog in the Window are a bit silly, whilst the first version sounds quite ugly.

Apart from that, this album still has a lot of PBS beauty to offer. Songs like 'Sail away', 'Look into her eyes' and 'Man in the tree' are still attractive (to name some of the good songs of just side one), though the blurry production remains a problem for me. This album also has the first vocal appearances of Elisabeth, which is good.

The album has few psych folk traces left and it's quite a mystery why PBS left the brilliant atmospheric psych folk format of 'Balaklava' when the progressive (folk) movement was just getting started. Looking back on this album one must wonder what went wrong on 'These things too'. Before and after this PBS would record great records with a warm production and I'm tempted to say that this album must have been recorded with inferior means and/or with great haste. There's just lot's of potential in most songs, but I keep getting dizzy whilst listening to this album.

Conclusion. Based on the quality of this product I have to give two stars and I prefer any other album by Pearls Before Swine. For listeners who are less bothered by the sound of this record this might still be a very worthwhile album of Tom Rapp and crew. A real pity, with a good production and stronger performance this might just have been a four star record.

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