Tuesday, 10 April 2018

John D. Loudermilk - The Open MInd of John D. Loudermilk


Rating: 4/5

Review:
Still very good stuff


I was pleasantly surprised by how good this album still is.  John D. Loudermilk was just a name to me in 1969 when the original album was issued and I didn’t really know his work.  I'm glad I've got to know it better now.

This is an apparently quite laid-back collection of melodic, slightly folky, slightly psych-y songs, very nicely performed and well sung.  There's real meat here, though, in Loudermilk's intelligent, often witty lyrics.  Poor Little Pretty Girl, for example, is a thoughtful take on how difficult a pretty face can make life and forming genuine relationships, Geraldine is a very witty pastiche of those lightweight name songs which were turned out by the yard in the sixties and Brown Girl makes serious, angry points about racism while sounding like an easy-listening, sentimental calypso-tinged love song.  It's all  very classy stuff which repays close listening.

This perhaps isn't a real Classic Album (very few are) but it's good and has stood the test of the years very well.  I can recommend it.

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