The first-ever career-spanning representation of the British heavy blues hitters. Quite spooky.
In all honesty, the band deserve a box set treatment but this double-disc comp comes as close to it as it gets. The ensemble could be revered if only for the players that later on graced such diverse collectives as HUMBLE PIE, THE ONLY ONES and MOTT THE HOOPLE - diverse but with one common element: rowdiness. Yet there's also the immense corpus of works which welcomed to delve in the noiseniks as fresh as JUDAS PRIEST, who covered the acoustic-tinged rifferama of "Better By You, Better Than Me", and as old as THE MOVE, who made the jolly psychedelic "Sunshine Help Me" their live staple. Both classics are here, among other albums cuts intersperesed with rarities, singles and their B-sides, including the opener, "Weird", which boasts, though still tentatively, all the elements that made SPOOKY TOOTH special - the elements you get when you throw in English blues lovers with the best American singer and keyboard player this side of Al Kooper.
It's Gary Wright's organ and, more importantly, songwriting that still keep the SPOOKY legend afloat, and "It's All About A Roundabout", that with its light groove could have been easily re-imagined as disco floor-filler, still hold its own alongside the hard-hitting standard "Tobacco Road", featuring the delicious wails of Luther Grosvenor's guitar and Mike Harrison's voice on the band's debut album, and the 1968's almost orchestral take on THE BAND's "The Weight". Why handle outside material at the time when there was fabulously creepy "When I Get Home", punctured with Greg Ridley's bass, that remained unreleased until now, is anyone's guess; but when it came to "Spooky Two", there was no doubt as to the songs' quality be it a New Orlean's buzz of "Hangman Hang My Shell On A Tree" or a countrified "Feeling Bad", whereas the nine-minute-long sludge-like witch-fest "Evil Woman" shows the players' further progress as interpretors.
Never the strangers to experiments, they teamed up with French musique concrete master Pierre Henry for "Ceremony" in 1969, but in the anthology context "Hosanna" from this "electronic mass" sounds like a continuation of the band's previous work and doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. Still, it made Wright jump the ship, so the songs from the following year's "The Last Puff" don't fly even though the guitar front was reinforced with Henry McCulloch, and nothing could make the instrumental title track, the only original on offer, outshine Elton John and THE BEATLES' imaginative covers. After that, the break-up - and the 1973 reformation with Gary at the helm. The tremendously titled "You Broke My Heart So I Busted Your Jaw" added the rolling joy of "Wildfire" to the canon, and one can easily trace the roots of FOREIGNER back to Mick Jones' contribution to this piece as well as the piano-led spiritual "Times Have Changed", and the memorable, hookful "Things Change" from the next LP, "Witness". But the life was slowly seeping out of SPOOKY, and 1974's "The Mirror" saw Mike Patto take the frontman spot to belt out "Fantasy Satisfier" and fill it with atomic funk energy, to dig deep the reggae of "Higher Circles" and to elevate the dramatic, richly textured title track even higher yet never reach the band's past heights.
To the higher circles they moved, indeed, flying high and mighty. The TOOTH returned a quarter of century later, yet the veterans' new songs can't rock these golden treasures. Now, on to the box, perhaps?
*****
