Who knows how many mute inglorious psychedelic bands never managed to put out an album? Pisces were one of them: a group from the nowheresville of Rockford, Illinois. Their Lennon and McCartney wannabe auteurs were guitarist Jim Krein and keyboardist Paul DiVenti, who came up through the bar-band scene, put together a little studio and recorded piles of material, basically because they'd heard Sgt. Pepper's and the White Album and had to let it out somehow. Barely any of it was ever heard outside the walls of their studio, A Lovely Sight (which was briefly the band's name, too)-- just three singles on a label run by a Rockford tailor with big ambitions for his own easy-listening sides.
This isn't an unreleased album, as such, despite the disingenuous "bonus tracks" at the end of the CD: it was pieced together from bits of a half-disintegrated acetate, their singles' A-sides, and a few other tapes that have survived the last four decades. It's not quite a lost masterpiece, either. Pisces weren't a big deal the first time around, partly because they were stuck in the Midwest, but mostly because Krein and DiVenti were strictly average songwriters-- most of their material is somewhere in the range between underdeveloped and barely germinated. The low point is probably "Elephant Eyes", an embarrassing Doors impression with a carousel-music bridge flown in from "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!"
What Pisces did have going for them was a van-load of clever arrangement ideas (like the way the lurching bass riff of "Dear One" triggers the song's textural shifts), and mightily impressive studio technique for a couple of guys who were basically doing everything on their own. Every song here has a distinctive and freaky sonic identity that makes a lot out of their limited resources-- they were effectively Elephant 6 avant la lettre. The drum loop that propels "Mary" is years ahead of its time (although the flange effect it's run through, along with about half of the rest of the album, is the king of psychedelic clichés). Accompanied by heady harmonies and a wasp-nest bass riff, it sounds amazing for about 45 seconds; then Krein and DiVenti run out of song and throw in a slowed-down breakdown and a bunch of atonal tape noise and sound effects until it's time for the fadeout. Nice try.
Pisces' greatest asset, though, was a singer who was only passing through: 17-year-old Linda Bruner, who sang Krein's lyrics as if she were choking back tears. (Great detail from the liner notes: "When last heard from, Linda was embroiled in a check fraud scheme and was on the run.") Her voice has the smoldering singularity that Krein's and DiVenti's lack, and she's the star of the album's centerpiece: "Sam", a woozy, chorusless, one-chord farewell that was way too much of a bummer to make an impact as a single but staggers out of the album to glower intently at anyone willing to listen to its naked pain. Krein found an ideal interpreter in Bruner, and rose to the opportunity. The four tracks he wrote for her are A Lovely Sight's best and deepest-- effectively an awkward but priceless EP, a little bad-trip marvel. Next to them, the rest of Pisces' surviving output just sounds like context.
