Oxfords - Flying Up Through The Sky (1966-72) (2001)

This compilation is a lovely surprise. The fourth installment in Gear Fab's Louisville music series is the absolute last word on the Oxfords. Starting off with all but one cut from the sole 1970 LP and filling out the story with the two pre-Jill DeMarco 45s, the band's one post-album single, and five previously unreleased cuts from its final incarnation, Flying Up Through the Sky constitutes the Oxfords' entire recorded legacy. The material from the original LP tends toward the lighter side of the '60s pop spectrum. The melodies are largely Technicolor bright and the sentiments have a paisley-eyed optimism that seems endemic to the late '60s alone. The harmonies of leader Jay Petach and DeMarco approach the sort of oxygenated buoyancy of the 5th Dimension or the Free Design, but with an earthier charm along the lines of Spanky & Our Gang. The music may strike some as a tad na?ve, but it fits the insouciant mood of the period perfectly and 30 years after the fact still sounds fresh. At times ("Come on 'Round," the wah-wah laced "Young Girl's Lament") the band flashes more substantive hints, sounding something like the Jefferson Airplane's tough but yet deflowered younger sister, unsettled but still unspoiled. The rearrangement of the Quechua Indian song, "Sung at Harvest Time," is beautifully, eerily psychedelic, and the avant-orchestral experiment of "Two Poems by e.e. cummings," while not really successful as a pure listening experience, is bizarrely appealing. The tracks from the initial unit are much more derivative (specifically of the Beatles, Kinks, and Monkees) but they are a great window into Petach's developing sense of songcraft, especially the Bandstand-thumbed "Sun Flower Sun," which sounds terribly quaint but is still infectious. It is the last version of the band, circa 1972, that most impresses. The band had obviously found a quite exciting -- perhaps even forward-looking -- niche, very much enthralled with sophisticated jazz and blues. On songs like the whirlwind "Those Winds" and "Tornado Baby," it is consistently in the pocket, while "Sweet Lover Man" even predicts the loose, laid-back, and country-funky songs that Essra Mohawk sang for Bob Dorough's Schoolhouse Rock series several years later. The album includes CD-ROM content (additional band photos and lyrics, a song-by-song commentary from Petach himself) for the ultimate band package. Flying Up Through the Sky is a time capsule, to be sure, but it is a superb one that transcends its era on sheer exuberance alone.