Crossroads of Time

Album review

The Eyes of Blue's debut album is a rather typical bottom-drawer late-'60s psychedelic effort, going over much of the musical map without charting new territory or doing especially interesting songs. Chunks of British harmony pop, soul, trendy Eastern-tinged psychedelia, and early progressive classical-dipped melodies and arrangements all bump around in the mix, though they don't cohere too memorably. The Welsh group did have a more organ-based sound than many of their U.K. peers, and the band's keyboardist, Phil Ryan, has admitted that Graham Bond was a big influence on his style on this album. Bond's input wasn't limited to this; he also wrote two of the songs, "Crossroads of Time" and "Love Is the Law" (though they were credited to "D. Stewart," aka his girlfriend, Diane Stewart), both of which Bond himself would record slightly later on his 1969 album Love Is the Law. The Eyes of Blue's version of "Love Is the Law" sounds more like the early Bee Gees than Graham Bond, though it's actually one of the better songs on the record. "Crossroads of Time" is likewise one of the relative highlights, starting off with an atomic explosion and Phantom of the Opera organ, though its lyrics are pretty blatant hippie sloganeering. It's an indictment of the weakness of the group's original material (by guitarist Ritchie Francis) that the most notable other track is one of the most eccentric covers of the Beatles' "Yesterday" you'll hear, arranged to sound almost like a classical hymn.

© Richie Unterberger /TiVo