In its original three-volume vinyl form in the early 1980s, the
Chocolate Soup for Diabetics LPs comprised the first and possibly greatest reissue series of obscure-'60s British psychedelia. It was eventually made somewhat irrelevant when virtually all of the material got reissued on CD in better sound quality (and at the right speed), but it's still remembered fondly by collectors. So the appearance of some follow-up volumes, again on LP, about two decades later raised some hopes that the series had resumed with a similar dedication to uncovering old nuggets. However, although the front cover graphics copy the design of the original series to a T (simply using some different colors), it's really a continuation of the concept in name only. The 14 songs on volume four, for one thing, are not all that psychedelic, with a greater bent toward 1966-68 mod-rock and a curious predilection for mod-soul. Those genres are good too, of course, but the non-hits chosen for this album are on the whole not nearly as stellar as the ones that filled the original three volumes. What's more, some of these tracks really aren't all that heard to find elsewhere, like
the Longboatmen's smoking mod number "Take Her Any Time" (though the band was actually from Sweden) and Chords Five's somewhat silly "Universal Vagrant." There are a few other above-average cuts, like
Answers' slightly ominous "Just a Fear" (with future
Misunderstood guitarist
Tony Hill) and (from France), the Darwin's Theory's strange "Hosanna," which does boast a nifty riff despite having few words other than the title. Much of the rest is on the middling-to-forgettable side, and while it has its uses for very dedicated collectors, it's far below the standards of the earlier volumes bearing the "Chocolate Soup for Diabetics" name.