S.F. Sorrow | Loppylugs

Submitted by Catherine Grimaldi on 20 December 2013 - 2:39pm

Cover:

Artist:

The Pretty Things

album-ID:

a_143

Nationality:

Year:

1 968

Release-year:

0000

Num-of-tracks:

Track-listing:

S.F. Sorrow is Born*Bracelets of Fingers*She Says Good Morning*Private Sorrow*Balloon Burning*Death*Baron Saturday*The Journey*I See You*Well of Destiny*Trust*Old Man Going*Loneliest Person*Defecting Grey*Mr Evasion*Talkin' About The Good Times*Walking Through My Dreams

Length-in-mins:

Nominator:

Bean

meeting-ID:

m_55

Now-num:

2 014

Spotify-URL:

5RR55mlo6E08bhcEDRjXO2

Grooveshark-URL:

S+F+Sorrow/4888425

Short-title:

sfsorrow

nominator-ID:

u_97

Meeting-date:

Sunday, 2 February 2014

MusicBrainz-URL:

93181a2a-e241-3856-be77-e3c6885884f6

Wikipedia-URL:

S.F._Sorrow

Spotify-link-type:

album

Discogs-URL:

Pretty-Things-SF-Sorrow/master/59306

Allmusic-URL:

sf-sorrow-mw0000308955

rdio-URL:

The_Pretty_Things/album/S.F._Sorrow/

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reviewers-IDs data

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68

reviewed by

Richard Norbury
68

reviewed by

Neil Hornsey

Pretty boys

13-14

I'd been listening to this lot recently anyway, to the albums directly before and after this one. They changed styles rapidly, but this album seems to capture the pop/psychedelia crossover perfectly. There's some well crafted and entertaining tracks here, making it a very listenable album. It gets better for me in the latter half, the tracks having a bit more to them than the opening ones which seem a little lightweight. Defecting Grey is a classic, worth the entrance fee alone. Overall not on a par with the likes of 13th Floor Elevators, but not a million miles away.
59

reviewed by

Glyn Lewis

Hatful of Sorrow

6-7-10

1-15-16-17

It’s an album full of all sorts of 60s approaches, the fact that it is Norman Smith production made sense to me given how reminiscent it was of early Floyd and Beatles stuff from that era. There’s imaginative production ideas and variety throughout with changes in feel, but it does all somehow sound rather prehistoric.

Concept albums do have a tendency to shape elements of the album for reasons that are non musical, which I feel is often not a good thing. I’d also suggest story telling within albums can be problematic – once the listener has followed a narrative route through, having to repeat that journey on subsequent plays can feel restrictive and frustrating. I think the different ways these two forms are experienced (an album and a story) tends to make them incompatible.

The album is very indicative of the era in which it was made, so your view of it would largely be determined by your take on that sound, as beyond that I'm not too sure what the album has to offer – there is nothing to lift it above other 60s psychedelia acts, like say the whimsy of Syd Barrett era Floyd or the outright surreal nonsense of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. Definitely varied and constructed with some effort, but it doesn’t do much for me.
55

reviewed by

Matthew Baker

The first concept album?

Interesting psychedelic curiosity. Can sometimes feel like a pastiche of a psychedelic band.

Struggled to follow the concept/story, whatever it was.