Fricke’s Picks: Lost Love Returns

December 8th, 2009 by David Fricke Leave a reply »

The long wilderness years of Arthur Lee, the mercurial singer-songwriter-commander of the Los Angeles band Love, began with an abandoned 1971 LP for Columbia, now resurrected on Love Lost (Sundazed). By then, Lee was four years and several Love lineups away from the dark orchestral magic of 1967’s Forever Changes. The full-band tracks here are heavy serrated-guitar rock (this is the Love I saw at a late-1970 Fillmore East show), and Lee’s writing is aggressively blunt in “Everybody’s Gotta Live” (re-cut for his 1974 solo debut, Vindicator) and “Product of the Times.” But there is a fighting magnetism in the music and Lee’s voice. He sings with fierce engagement even on acoustic demos like “Sad Song.” Lee slipped in and out of sight after this, until the end-of-the-century Love revival. But it is clear here that even on the eve of exile, Lee had much Love to give.

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Article Source: Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily
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