Scroll down for a review of reissues of the first four Harpers Bizarre recordings!

Prince
The Rainbow Children

(NPG)

www.npgmusicclub.com

Children of a Lesser God is more like it. For me the tip-off should've been the "controversial new album" sticker on the cover. Instinctively, I equated controversial with problematic. But being a once-devoted fan, I bought it anyway. I should've paid attention to my instincts. The Rainbow Children is the Prince formerly known as artist's attempt at a smooth jazz and soul record. Trouble is it's long on slick, soulless production and religious claptrap and exceedingly short on solid ideas and melodies. To employ one of Prince's own tired conceits, eye believe this 1 is 4 the dumper.

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Harpers Bizarre
Feelin' Groovy
Anything Goes
The Secret Life of Harpers Bizarre
4

(Sundazed)

www.sundazed.com

Could any band from the late '60s be as groovy as Harpers Bizarre? But listening to these four albums now, one has to wonder, and marvel, at just how peculiar this band was. Originally, they were five lads from Santa Cruz, Calif., and they called themselves the Tikis, but believing that their surfing-sounding moniker would not fit their soon-to-be feel-good hit "Feelin' Groovy," it was decided that Harpers Bizarre was more suitable because it was "tricky and perverse, but it made sense."

Never was a description more apt for this band, which combined Tin Pan Alley tunes and the sunshine pop sound of Curt Boettcher with the sardonic sensibilities of Van Dyke Parks and Randy Newman, who composed many of the songs here. The group's vocals were certainly airy and angelic, and the music was exceedingly twee, and no doubt many moms across the nation considered this stuff safe as milk.

In actuality these four records were not far off from the works that both Parks and Brian Wilson were fashioning at the time – music that's idiosyncratic and cinematic. Each album is loaded with strange but fascinating aural details, with perhaps Anything Goes' sepia-toned program the oddest of the lot. What makes them all truly subversive is that beneath the choirboy veneer and candy-sweet orchestrations there's a subtle but affecting yearning to escape to a time that no longer, or perhaps never did, exist (remember, these recordings came out in the midst of intense civil strife and the Vietnam conflict). A line from Newman's seemingly cheery "Happyland" makes it plain: "I was better off when I was pretending / Everything's far too real."

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