The Unspoken Word - The Unspoken Word (1970) [2010]

What a difference two years makes. It's difficult to imagine a more drastic musical about-face than the one made by the Unspoken Word on their second album. The Long Island band's 1968 debut, Tuesday, April 19 -- which has become a psych collector's cult classic -- was full of delicately rendered folk-rock, fleshed out with elaborately orchestrated baroque/psychedelic arrangements very much in the post-Sgt. Pepper's mode of its day. One can't help but speculate about whether the stylistic shift on their self-titled 1970 release -- finally made available on CD 40 years later -- was a result of natural evolution or pressure from the label to come up with something more palatable to the mainstream market circa 1970. Whichever scenario is accurate, the Unspoken Word abandon the arty constructions and sweeping, swirling orchestrations of their predecessor for a visceral, bluesy, groove-minded approach, full of greasy riffs, gritty vocals, and downright funky beats. The harmonies of Dede Puma and guitarist Zenya Stashuk still sport a Jefferson Airplane-style vocal blend, but instead of floating gently atop dreamy surfaces, the vocals sit on top of punchy, percolating tunes closer in feel to, say, the R&B-flavored sound of the contemporaneous Pacific Gas & Electric. Ironically, the fact that Puma's vocals still lean closer to the cool, vibratoless style of Grace Slick than the soul/blues ululations of Janis Joplin may be the main thing that keeps many of these tunes from falling into a generic early-‘70s soul-rock sound. When left to his own devices as a vocalist here, Stashuk certainly journeys too far in that direction. Meanwhile, the guitar and organ riffs often bear a distortion-laden crunch that nods to the burgeoning hard rock scene of the time. Nevertheless, the things that served the band in good stead on its first album -- strong harmonies, tight playing, and a solid sense of structure -- still shine through here, even if those expecting the orchestral-psych excursions of the first album are in for a bit of a shock.