Baroque Hoedown (2023 Remastered Expanded Edition)

Album review

After making a splash with their garage psych records made under the name the Salvation Army, the Three O'Clock returned with a new name, a lineup featuring keyboards, and a less punk-inspired sound on the Baroque Hoedown EP. What did remain from their days as the Salvation Army were the incredibly hooky songs, bassist Michael Quercio's lilting vocals, and a sense that the group had plugged into the same flow that groups like the Who and the Action had back in the '60s. Only now it was spliced with some of the ornate lushness of Baroque poppers the Left Banke and toytown psych residents like Tomorrow. The first track, "With a Cantaloupe Girlfriend," is a stunning statement of intent built on pummeling drums, precise harpsichord tinkles, stunning vocal harmonies, and lyrics that verge on psychedelic while still being joyfully romantic. It's a wonderful song; so good that if it was the only thing they had ever released, people would still be talking about them in hushed tones decades later. The rest of the EP doesn't lag far behind. The second best song, "I Go Wild," dials the energy down just a bit, brings in some Byrds-style jangle, and gives a good clue as to who Quercio's bass-playing role model was -- McCartney, of course. They romp through the Easybeats' "Sorry" with insouciant glee, add lovely violin playing to the yearning psych rocker "Marjorie Tells Me," and on "As Real as Real," take a delicate side trip into hazy psychedelia that's no patch on what the Rain Parade were doing at the time. This song shows how far the Three O'Clock had come since their Salvation Army incarnation, as well as going a long way toward putting the band at the head of the class of psych pop explorers just setting out in the early '80s in search of ways to honor and update the sounds that inspired them so strongly. Baroque Hoedown not only updates these sounds, any band operating in the actual mid- to late '60s would have been happy to be able to put together an EP as hooky, trippy, and fully realized as this.

© Tim Sendra /TiVo