The Plastic Cloud's self-titled album is a strangely compelling and overall delightful mix of West Coast '60s sounds, without any two songs sounding exactly alike, or even displaying the same attributes. Not that any fan of that era will mind any of it, and especially not the
Byrds-like harmonies on the opening number, "Epistle to Paradise," which sounds like a more ornate and trippier follow-up to "Renaissance Fair" coupled with "Here Without You." But on "Shadows of Your Mind" the fuzztone guitar cuts in, along withRandy Umphrey's drumming -- which recalls
John Densmore's work with
the Doors -- for a kind of
Buffalo Springfield homage. And "Art's a Happy Man" comes off like a weird-ass amalgam of the early
Jefferson Airplane and
Spanky & Our Gang. But the ten-minute "You Don't Care" may well bring to mind
Big Brother & the Holding Company instrumentally, and the
Notorious Byrd Brothers album vocally and psychically. And "Bridge Under the Sky" evokes memories of
the Youngbloods. It's all enjoyable and full of pleasant surprises. ~ Bruce Eder