Nick Saloman was once a second-hand record dealer. Over a prodigious musical career (nearly 20 albums so far), the long-haired Englishman known as the Bevis Frond has likewise dealt in dusted-off, literate psychedelia, even earning a spot on Rhino's Children of Nuggets box. Recording mostly solo on vintage equipment, Saloman alternates between squealing hippie jams, fuzzed-out indie-pop and stately, pastoral folk. His voice is wounded, elegant and scrupulously unaffected. London Stone, the latest Rubric reissue in Saloman's series of turn-of-the-90s lo-fi neopsych primers, was intended as the follow-up to 1991 magnum opus New River Head, but the band's U.S. label chief took a pass, leaving the album without distribution here-- until now.
As any veteran vinyl hunter knows, the story should end with London Stone (plus bonus traxx!) triumphantly taking its place as the Frond's lost masterpiece. After an unaccompanied, traditional fiddle piece by guest Barry Dransfield, the record certainly gets off to an impressive start with "Coming Round". The album's best and poppiest tune builds into dueling jesusfuck guitar solos, both played by Saloman 'course, and sees this Mascis-like dinosaur admitting, "I come from a different age." "That Same Morning" can stand proudly beside to contemporaries like Teenage Fanclub with its jingle-jangle acoustic guitars. Live favorite "Well Out of It" knocks out teeth with chunky grunge riffage; "Still Trying" is an uptempo Farfisa-ish organ stomper that easily bests most of the recent garage-rock revivalists. "Lord of Nothing" sticks out pleasantly enough as a slightly twee British folk song in the mold of Richard Thompson.
A few tracks too often, however, Saloman winds up adding too little to the gems in his evidently formidable LP collection. In the liner notes, he admits to waxing "Hendrixiano" on "Living Soul", which blisters and bluesters somewhere between "Purple Haze" and "Crosstown Traffic", but that doesn't make it memorable. Title track "London Stone" opens with the many-times familiar, distortion-laden chords of "All Along the Watchtower", then closes with another Dransfield fiddle solo-- which will come as an unwanted dorm-room flashback for anyone who went collegiate during the Dave Matthews regime. But don't ask me to explain why "A Most Singular Hole" ("There's a hole in my life and I fill it up with doubt") is better than a well-shroomed jam band with the right pedals; it's not.
It speaks well for Saloman that even in 2005, when many of his original selling points have supposedly become uncool-- authenticity, virtuosity, faith in the redemptive power of rock and/or roll-- that so many of his songs still thrill in their own right. The bonus tracks, too, are always at least passable, from an illuminating demo version of "Coming Round" to an arguably superior version of the album's "And Now She's Gone", plus unreleased tunes (of which acoustic, haunting "Scavenger" is the most worthwhile). Completists who own the original will want to seek out the reissued London Stone for these. Alas, good luck finding it on vinyl.
