One of the stranger albums from the psychedelic world, Vancouver's The Collectors proves that major labels were willing to pull out all the stops to attract an ever mind-expanding audience. This is haunting, trippy song based psychedelia at its best. Wonderful fuzz, vintage organ, flute, and mournful vocals. The highlight has to be 'Howard Christman's Older', which features some of the craziest lyrics you'll ever hear from the 60s. One even wonders how a group could compose such an odd song? The only downside is that the side long track 'What Love (Suite)' is way too long for what it offers. And the experimentation here is almost too much. It's as if they are trying too hard to shock, when they already managed to do that successfully on the other side. Albeit, in a much more subtle way. Certainly The Doors are an inspiration for a lot of this album, though it trips out from there. Had they cut the side longer in half, and added one or two more tracks, this would have been in the monster territory. As it stands, we'll call it excellent.
Ownership: LP: 1968 Warner Bros-Seven Arts (USA). Online acquisition from 2014. Single sleeve cover with really cool, San Francisco psychedelic-era artwork. This had fallen to the bottom of the weedout stack. Obviously I missed the sublime nuance here. This is going nowhere. Nice originals can still be had for cheap. It must have sold well, as there are many pressings. CDs are more scarce.
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