The Travel Agency | es

This band is totally anonymous other than having Frank Davis as a member. Davis was an associate of the Texas band Fever Tree, and wrote the two-minute blast "Grand Candy Young Sweet" for their second album. Though much less well known, this LP is better than any of the four by Fever Tree. The opening track, "What's A Man" is more relevant today than it was then! A conversation between a father and his hawkish son (wasn't it the other way around back then?), it has Iraq all over it: ("You can't imagine what I'm thinking / We've got to fight them while they're small / Or their disease will soon be spreading / And then we'll never kill them all"). I don't know what Ann Coulter was doing in '68, but if that doesn't sound like something straight out of her lunatic rantings, I don't know what does! There's nothing else here that's quite that powerful here, but the Beatlesque "Sorry You Were Born", and the fuzz-laden "Cadillac George" are terrific on their own terms. The group gets mystical, with mixed results. "Lonely Seabird" is spellbinding, but the extended, raga-like "That's Good" is simply somnolent. The classical guitar framed "So Much Love", and "You Will Be There" sound like renaissance madrigals. If anything, the group was adept at writing and performing an impressive variety of material. There's unrealized hit potential here. Both "She Understands", and "Come To Me" are instantly catchy, if only someone had been around to catch them. The album peters out with the closing track, "Old Man", which lifts the guitar riff from "Peggy Sue", but there's still enough here to make me wish for a follow - up. .