12 Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus

Patchy at all but the very best of times, a dip into the back catalogue of Californian eclectics Spirit is to be treated with caution. Happily, 1970 was indeed the very best of times. The fourth and final LP recorded with the original quintet, …Sardonicus was to be their parting gift. Never before had they created anything quite this fascinating, and they would never come even remotely close to doing so again.

The premature death of talisman Randy California in the mid-1990’s severed any hopes of an Indian summer for the group, or at the very least a chance to see some fat, ageing hippies in the flesh but perhaps that is no harm; the conservatism that so often accompanies predatory old-age might have seen a live Spirit shy away from the wonderful excesses on this album. There are straight songs on …Sardonicus. “Nature’s Way” is your average, acoustic, hippy lament and none the worse for it while there is some pop-infused rock and pop-infused rock with a brass twist on “Animal Zoo” and “Mr Skin” respectively. But an entire record of these tracks, as fun as they are, would not be enough to justify re-birth from the Ragged Vault.

The soul of Sardonicus resides in three tracks on the second side. “When I Touch You” and “Street Worm” are what Spirit should always have been about, experimental rock structures (replete with occasional freak-outs) laid over a jazzy, laid back rhythm section – and if that sounds like the sort of dirge Grateful Dead fans touch themselves over, it never once loses its melodic instincts. This is jambalaya music; the end product is still pop, it just has a stranger list of ingredients. “Life Has Just Begun” is the final song of the trio, and is close to impossible to describe. But if Brian Wilson wrote a song while watching the sun rise over the Serengeti, it may well have sounded like this.

Spirit could so easily have been just another late 60’s exercise in mediocrity, a band formed because if you lived in a certain city in a certain period, then that’s just what you did. To a certain extent they were, but at least one of their records is overdue for re-assessment. This album opens and closes with the lyrics “You have the world at your fingertips/No one can make it any better than you.” For one brief moment in 1970, that line was closer to being auto-biographical than perhaps even they realised.