Pretty Things

For whatever reason, Pretty Things failed to make significant inroads in the U.S. when the window of opportunity was open widest. Perhaps the Rolling Stones, the Who, and the Animals more than fulfilled the quota for invading bad boys. Maybe their sophomoric (and less than artistic) obsession with drugs played a role, though that's doubtful, given the preponderance of mind-altering substance cheerleading by '60s bands. Like the Stones, Pretty Things incorporated garage, R&B, and psychedelia into their aggressive style of rock & roll…

The Pretty Things' debut LP was a legendary exercise in anarchy - 30 minutes into the two days' worth of sessions, their original producer, Jack Baverstock (the head of the label, no less), walked out, and was eventually replaced by a slightly more sympathetic personality in the hopes of salvaging something from the efforts of the band, who, whatever their shortcomings in decorum or sobriety, were on their third successive charting single. The resulting album, made under the coordination (if not control) of drummer-turned-producer Bobby Graham, made the early work of the Rolling Stones - rivals and one-time bandmates to the Pretty Things' Dick Taylor - sound more like the work of the Beatles: very calculated, lightweight, and…genteel. The Pretty Things is recorded with practically every song and instrument pushing the needle into the red (i.e., overload)…

The acoustic and gritty Bare as Bone, Bright as Blood is the remarkable and unexpected 2020 album by The Pretty Things, who remained the tainted, dark Rock royalty they always were until the very end.

Who could ever have thought, going back to the Pretty Things' first recording session in 1965 – which started out so disastrously that their original producer quit in frustration – that it would come to this? The Pretty Things' early history in the studio featured the band with its amps seemingly turned up to 11, but for much of S.F. Sorrow the band is turned down to seven or four, or even two, or not amplified at all (except for Wally Allen's bass – natch), and they're doing all kinds of folkish things here that are still bluesy enough so you never forget who they are, amid weird little digressions on percussion and chorus; harmony vocals that are spooky, trippy, strange, and delightful; sitars included in the array of stringed instruments; and an organ trying hard to sound like a Mellotron…

Who could ever have thought, going back to the Pretty Things' first recording session in 1965 – which started out so disastrously that their original producer quit in frustration – that it would come to this? The Pretty Things' early history in the studio featured the band with its amps seemingly turned up to 11, but for much of S.F. Sorrow the band is turned down to seven or four, or even two, or not amplified at all (except for Wally Allen's bass – natch), and they're doing all kinds of folkish things here that are still bluesy enough so you never forget who they are, amid weird little digressions on percussion and chorus; harmony vocals that are spooky, trippy, strange, and delightful; sitars included in the array of stringed instruments; and an organ trying hard to sound like a Mellotron…

"The EP Collection… Plus" offers a great overview of the Pretty Things, who played alongside the Rolling Stones in the small clubs of mid-60s London. The Pretty Things offer a brand of hard R&B that was similar to the Stones of that period, but harder and rawer…

At the time of his death earlier this year, Phil May was hugely excited about the impending release of the first-ever, all-acoustic Pretty Things album, which had recently been completed.