By 1967, rock'n'roll's voracious appetite for new sounds had drawn it unexpectedly close to another countercultural phenomenon: the classical avant-garde. John Cale, a former student of LaMonte Young, was introducing minimalist drone to The Velvet Underground. Paul McCartney was becoming diverted by the musique concrète and collagist techniques that would eventually result in "Revolution 9". And in Los Angeles, disgusted by American activity in Vietnam, a left-leaning ethnomusicologist called Joseph Byrd decided to form a rock band called, wryly, The United States Of America.
Byrd had a minor reputation as a modern composer. His first concert had taken place at Yoko Ono's New York loft and involved balloons being deflated very slowly. Neither he nor his new bandmates, however, had much knowledge of rock music. Instead, they sought to create psychedelia out of alternative components: primitive electronics; snatches of vaudevillian Americana; Gregorian chant; and, most radically, no guitars. The fuzzy riffs that punctuated The United States Of America were played by violinist Gordon Marron, with his instrument fed through a ring modulator.
On paper, it appears a rather bloodless, academic experiment. But Byrd's woozy fantasias are, in fact, anything but. What's most striking about the whole project is how the ingenuous cosmic fervour of the time could grasp the unlikeliest of converts. "How much fun it's been," chants Byrd at the climax of "The American Way Of Love", and there's little doubt that the band's questing spirit had a hallucinogenic as well as sonic aspect.
The result is this wonderful album, one of those '60s relics more referenced than heard (Broadcast, notoriously, based their entire sound upon it) until this lavish Sundazed reissue. For all their purported ignorance of rock, the United States still betray a sizeable Beatles influence: Byrd's "American Metaphysical Circus"crashes "Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite"into a Sousa march and beguiling electronic flutter; while Marron and organist Ed Bogas' "Stranded In Time"is a chamber miniature not dissimilar to "Eleanor Rigby".
Elsewhere—thanks in no small part to the precisely enunciated vocals of Byrd's ex-girlfriend, Dorothy Moskowitz—there's a certain resemblance to Jefferson Airplane. But the dense, frazzled, authentically disorienting detail is unique to the United States, and there's a surprising grasp of songcraft in the midst of all the echoing chaos: "Love Song For The Dead Che", sung by Moskowitz, is an uncannily frail and lovely torch song.
Nevertheless, The United States Of America proved too complex and strange a record, even for the supposed open minds of 1967. By the middle of the next year, only Moskowitz was left, briefly trying to realign the band into more conventional psych-rock territory (three demos, released here for the first time, show her efforts were pretty but unexceptional). Byrd, meanwhile, embarked on an even less successful project, The Field Hippies. Like the United States' New York contemporaries The Silver Apples, they now sound like a manifestation of '60s idealism too far out to be assimilated at the time, yet with a delirious Technicolor naivety that couldn't date from any other period. At once thrillingly futuristic, and whimsically arcane.
Post to Twitter
Byrd had a minor reputation as a modern composer. His first concert had taken place at Yoko Ono's New York loft and involved balloons being deflated very slowly. Neither he nor his new bandmates, however, had much knowledge of rock music. Instead, they sought to create psychedelia out of alternative components: primitive electronics; snatches of vaudevillian Americana; Gregorian chant; and, most radically, no guitars. The fuzzy riffs that punctuated The United States Of America were played by violinist Gordon Marron, with his instrument fed through a ring modulator.
On paper, it appears a rather bloodless, academic experiment. But Byrd's woozy fantasias are, in fact, anything but. What's most striking about the whole project is how the ingenuous cosmic fervour of the time could grasp the unlikeliest of converts. "How much fun it's been," chants Byrd at the climax of "The American Way Of Love", and there's little doubt that the band's questing spirit had a hallucinogenic as well as sonic aspect.
The result is this wonderful album, one of those '60s relics more referenced than heard (Broadcast, notoriously, based their entire sound upon it) until this lavish Sundazed reissue. For all their purported ignorance of rock, the United States still betray a sizeable Beatles influence: Byrd's "American Metaphysical Circus"crashes "Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite"into a Sousa march and beguiling electronic flutter; while Marron and organist Ed Bogas' "Stranded In Time"is a chamber miniature not dissimilar to "Eleanor Rigby".
Elsewhere—thanks in no small part to the precisely enunciated vocals of Byrd's ex-girlfriend, Dorothy Moskowitz—there's a certain resemblance to Jefferson Airplane. But the dense, frazzled, authentically disorienting detail is unique to the United States, and there's a surprising grasp of songcraft in the midst of all the echoing chaos: "Love Song For The Dead Che", sung by Moskowitz, is an uncannily frail and lovely torch song.
Nevertheless, The United States Of America proved too complex and strange a record, even for the supposed open minds of 1967. By the middle of the next year, only Moskowitz was left, briefly trying to realign the band into more conventional psych-rock territory (three demos, released here for the first time, show her efforts were pretty but unexceptional). Byrd, meanwhile, embarked on an even less successful project, The Field Hippies. Like the United States' New York contemporaries The Silver Apples, they now sound like a manifestation of '60s idealism too far out to be assimilated at the time, yet with a delirious Technicolor naivety that couldn't date from any other period. At once thrillingly futuristic, and whimsically arcane.
Post to Twitter
