Various Artists - Lullabies For Catatonics, A Journey Through The British Avant-Pop/Art Rock Scene 1967-74

There is quite a number of ways you can approach making a compilation album but usually each of those boils down to three main concepts - you sit down and pick a bunch of songs that currently fits the mood of the compiler(s), just as if you are making a home mixtape, just like any regular music fan. Second would be your ‘regular’ cash-in concept, a ‘best of’ a band, decade, genre… and you stick a title like The best (genre/band/decade) album ever! (never forget the exclamation mark!).

The third and most complicated one is when compilers, or even more so a few of them sit down, develop a concept, do extensive archival research and then painstakingly assemble the set, annotating everything in minute detail. This usually includes a bunch of obscurities, even unissued tracks.

With this third approach, we come to the threefold box set with a very precise set concept and title - Lullabies For Catatonics, A Journey Through The British Avant-Pop/Art Rock Scene 1967-74. Like quite a number of previous Cherry Red, or to be more precise, its offshoot label Grapefruit compilations/box sets., everything has been meticulously done, thought out, assembled, annotated. Even the PR blurb gives an exact explanation: ”Lullabies For Catatonics charts the journey without maps that was fearlessly undertaken in the late Sixties and early Seventies by the more cerebral elements of the underground, inspired by everyone from Bartok, Bach and The Beatles to Dada, Dali, and the Pop Art movement. Suddenly pop music was no longer restricted to moon-in-June lyrics and traditional song structures. Instead, it embraced the abstract, the discordant and the surreal as pop became rock, and rock became Art.”

And that is exactly what you get here - possibly no personal favourites, the omission of some hit or fan obvious choices, tracks that show influences and quite a few obscurities and unissued tracks.

Some obvious choices were definitely shunned for the sake of the integrity of the concept - while most of those familiar with the exploratory music of the early Soft Machine might have expected to hear a track with Robert Wyatt’s voice, we get a not previously issued “I Should’ve Known”, with most of the fans forgetting that the band initially included psych heavyweights like Kevin Ayers and Daevid Allen. And then Wyatt comes in with Matching Mole’s “O Caroline”, a track that might not be representative of Matching Mole’s often all-out experimentation, but is certainly of Wyatt’s complete output, the man somebody rightfully called “the most melancholic voice in modern music”.

Instead of going for the obvious choice of “Whiter Shade of Pale”, “Homburg” or “Salty Dog”, Procol Harum’s mega-influence on the development of the orchestral strain of psych/prog is presented with the gem that is “Conquistador”. Of course, Robert Fripp is represented, but there’s no King Crimson, but the pastoral quirky folk of Giles, Giles & Rip’s “I Talk To The Wind”.

Of, course, gems and masterpieces abound, like The Zombies and their “Butcher’s Tale (Western Front 1914)” from Odyssey And Oracle, one of the best rock albums ever, 10cc’s masterful “Somewhere In Hollywood”, from Sheet Music, probably their best album, which can also be said about The Pretty Things and their “Parachute”, from the album of the same name.

And then there are the influences, like The Riot Squad featuring David Bowie doing the Velvet’s seminal “I’m Waiting For The Man”, or Arthur Brown showing off his love of Captain Beefheart on “All Over The Country”.

All this is garnered with brilliant obscurities and oddities like the Third Ear Band or Ron Geesin and everything in-between including The Coxhill-Bedford Duo’s “Don Alfonso”, that might not be fully comprehended by the non-British fans, but can still be fully appreciated. 

Overall, no misses, and too many highs to mention. That good.