The most elegant debut album from San Francisco's psych-folk scene.
David LaFlamme’s singing violin and Linda LaFlamme’s pastoral keyboards add a delicate melancholy to the flower child atmosphere of the 60s. The opening track, “White Bird”, evokes the longing for freedom felt by two young people trapped in the city, almost under the shadow of their wings; while “Hot Summer Day” drapes the lassitude of the Californian heat over the body.
One of the album's greatest legacies is “Bombay Calling.”
The motif, rising like a mysterious string break, quickly transforms into a meditative loop. That undulating theme, shifting between electric violin and organ, melts both the crowded streets of India and the psychedelic quest of the West in the same pot. The structure of the piece flows almost improvisationally; with each turn, it gathers a little more tension, a slightly wider panorama. Beyond this, Deep Purple, with its new lineup (the Gillan-Glover era), had locked themselves in the studio, searching for a new sound. Master keyboardist Jon Lord, listening to the American psychedelic records playing on radios and in clubs, was struck by that cyclical, bell-like main motif: an Indian-infused, mystical, constantly rising line of tension... The rest is history, Child In Time emerged from this song.
“Girl With No Eyes.”
is the album's foggiest, most introspective moment. The song dismembers the act of "seeing" itself. A woman with no eyes stares intently at the wall, but her way of seeing the world is fundamentally different? Or is the whole story set in the soft rooms of a hallucination within LaFlamme's own mind? What does someone with no eyes see? What does someone with eyes miss if they cannot see their inner reality?
"She's just a reflection of all of the time that's gone by.
She's just a reflection of all of the time I've been high"
and of course
"Love takes a high time, love is the high sign"
And of course, the most legendary story surrounding the album: their failure to attend Woodstock.
It’s a Beautiful Day and Santana were managed by the same person, Matthew Katz. The decision of which band to send to the festival lineup was left entirely to chance: a coin toss. It landed on Santana; they exploded at Woodstock, while It’s a Beautiful Day missed out on the biggest stage in history. For those who know and feel the melancholy of "lost potential":
