The Index s/t LP

Ultra-obscure late 1960s garage psych from Michigan.  This was their first record (only record?), and if what I've heard is true, only one hundred copies of it were ever pressed making it a sort of holy grail for collectors.  I guess digital copies of it been have circulating around the net for at least five years, but I was just recently made aware of it through one of my favorite websites, shit-fi.

The album features a selection of original tunes, instrumentals, and covers and there's not a stinker among them.  The songwriting is in the folk/rock variety comparable to perhaps the Kinks or the Yardbirds but played in a kind of  'shambling' fashion and filtered through massively thick layers of reverb shimmy.  The result is some very off-kilter music that often sounds very dark in tone and as if it's being played in slow motion. It's been pointed out before that, though the band is all male, the vocals are very comparable in style to Nico, and I can't disagree; they are quite deep and often sound as though they are being sung against the music rather than with it.  The instrumentals all rip pretty hard managing to sound both discordant and bluesy (Turquoise Fe sounds like a bar band jamming really hard on 'ludes; Feedback sounds like that same band having a very bad trip).  The covers range from the inspired (traditional English ballad John Riley) to the absurd (the Supremes' You Keep Me Hangin' On), but are always interesting.

It's pretty tough to imagine what these guys were thinking when they recorded this back in 1967 or '68, but I have to assume that they loved playing together as I would guess the audience for this music during that time was small at best, if not altogether non-existent.  According to FM Shades the band gave away most of the albums they pressed to their friends, and original copies now fetch around three-grand (!).  Hopefully there will be a quality reissue in the future.  Until then, get it here.