Like The Association and The Fifth Dimension, The Free Design?the four Dedrick brothers and sisters from New York?specialised in a rococo harmony-pop whose vaulting complexities elevated it far above more prosaic easy listening. On their second album, You Could Be Born Again (1968), they're at their best negotiating a path between extreme joy and willowy etherealism. Occasionally, their covers ("California Dreamin", "Happy Together") are merely inoffensive. But when Chris Dedrick's songwriting and arranging skills are stretched ("Ivy On A Windy Day", a great take on Duke Ellington's "I Like The Sunrise"), the results are striking and unearthly. Stars/ Time/Bubbles/Love (1970) is more expansive still, with the likes of "Bubbles" and "That's All, People" revealed as hygienic, ingenuous rethinks of psychedelia and funk. Whimsical, but lovely.
Like The Association and The Fifth Dimension, The Free Design?the four Dedrick brothers and sisters from New York?specialised in a rococo harmony-pop whose vaulting complexities elevated it far above more prosaic easy listening. On their second album, You Could Be Born Again (1968), they’re at their best negotiating a path between extreme joy and willowy etherealism. Occasionally, their covers (“California Dreamin”, “Happy Together”) are merely inoffensive. But when Chris Dedrick’s songwriting and arranging skills are stretched (“Ivy On A Windy Day”, a great take on Duke Ellington’s “I Like The Sunrise”), the results are striking and unearthly. Stars/ Time/Bubbles/Love (1970) is more expansive still, with the likes of “Bubbles” and “That’s All, People” revealed as hygienic, ingenuous rethinks of psychedelia and funk. Whimsical, but lovely.