AUTUMN PEOPLE

Oh, what to say about Autumn People? How can express my simultaneous affection and exasperation for a band that sounds like it was unearthed from '69-'70 and thrust into 1976? Simple: decent riffs, occasionally memorable hooks, some lovely guitar playing. Autumn People feel, very keenly, like a band removed from their time and place, and the very poor production values of their lone album only serve to enhance this impression. It sounds like it was recorded at 2 AM at a hole-in-the-wall studio circa 1970; the vocals are decent, but occasionally grating to the ear, and the keyboard is often buried so deep in the mix that I have to pay very close attention to make sure I'm not hallucinating a phantom organ line. Taking all this into consideration, the band knows how to play. This is an easygoing album, inviting and clumsy and out-of-time (temporally; their drummer is actually pretty good). Pick it up for a curiosity, and you will find it lingering in that stack of albums you re-listen to occasionally with a smile.