Track Listing

1. Another Time
2. Playmate
3. Ballad To An Amber Lady
4. Oh Dear Miss Morse
5. Drop Out
6. Morning Song
7. Regions Of May
8. Uncle John
9. I Shall Not Care
10. Surrealist Waltz
11. Trumpeter Landfrey
12. Translucent Carriages
13. Images Of April
14. There Was A Man
15. I Saw The World
16. Guardian Angels
17. Suzanne
18. Lepers And Roses
19. Florence Nightingale
20. Ring Thing

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #84455 in Music
• Released on: 2006-05-15
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .23 pounds

CD Description
When Tom Rapp and his folk-rock collective Pearls Before Swine began
toiling in obscurity in the late 1960s, no onecould have imagined that
the group would become a key influence on a cutting-edge musical
movement some three-and-a-half decades later. Nevertheless, Pearls
Before Swine's first two albums--both made for now-legendary NYC
avant-garde indie label ESP on a shoestring budget--tend to come just
after the work of the Incredible String Band onthe "Our Influences"
list of early-2000s neo-psych-folkbands (Animal Collective, et al).
It's immediately apparent that Rapp's songwriting was heavily influenced by Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen (there's a memorable cover of Cohen's
"Suzanne" here), and Tim Hardin. However, Pearls Before Swine took
things a step further, daring to be as expansivesonically as those
artists were with their lyrics. Rappand company were among the first to
combine introspective/poetic songwriting with a swirling, atmospheric
rock sound, effectively making them one of the first psych-folk groups.
The lo-fi production, occasional artistic overreaching, and Rapp's
ever-present lisp merely add to the highly endearing (and ultimately
artistically satisfying) qualities of the two albums so conveniently
combined here on one disc.

Customer Reviews

Well worth the money.
Pearls before Swine's The Use of Ashes is one of those strange, haunting records of "baroque contemporary folk music" that is genuinely both original and as near to "timeless" as any piece of contemporary popular music gets. (As I've said elsewhere, they are like the quiet American flip-side to Mellow Candle's Irish work in the same baroque folk field). What you get here are the contents of the two records - One Nation Underground and Balaklava - that led up to the production of songs like The Use Of Ashes, Rocket Man, God Save The Child, Song About a Rose, Margery and Riegal. While there is nothing here that quite comes up to the standard of these gems, songs like Another Time, Drop Out!, I Shall Not Care, and There Was A Man have all the hallmark of the best of Pearls Before Swine's work - wonderful, usually melancholy, lyrics and brilliantly quirky arrangements all excellently sung and played. Well worth the money!