VARIOUS

The Sixties Downunder series of Australian 1960s rock takes a downturn for its fourth volume, as series of this sort often do the deeper they get into the count. The reservations that apply to rock from this time and region to milder degrees on some other Australian '60s comps come more to the foreground here: too much imitative derivation of overseas rock trends, too many covers of overseas songs done better elsewhere, and too much of a bubblegummy pop vibe the further it gets into the psychedelic pop era. That's not to say there isn't some good stuff here, and that it isn't at the least educational for North American and European listeners who have heard virtually nothing of '60s rock from this part of the world. There are a couple of singles from the one group on here that many people all over the globe will have heard before, the Easybeats, and Steve Wright and George Young of the Easybeats wrote one of the better remaining tracks, Johnny Young's decent 1966 British Invasion-like mover "Step Back." The Loved Ones' 1966 single "Sad Dark Eyes" is an actual classic, a brooding R&B ballad that sounds like a missing link between Them and Nick Cave, with some of the longest held vocal note-howls you'll come across on a rock single. There's no buried treasure among the other couple dozen tracks, however, though there are some pleasing outings here and there, like Bev Harrell's perky cover of P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri's "What Am I Doing Here With You?," Pastoral Symphony's phased pop-psych-soul "Love Machine," and Bobby & Laurie's reading of Roger Miller's "Hitchhiker." A lot of the post-1967 portion of the disc is insubstantial, sweet, flower power bubblegum or bombastically orchestrated flower pop (the Virgil Brothers sound like a terribly overwrought Walker Brothers imitation), though the heavier hard rock-psychedelia of King Fox's "Unforgotten Dreams" ends the CD on a relatively up note. ~ Richie Unterberger, AMG

Estimated despatch 5-10 days after ordering.