Love - Love Lost [previously unreleased] (1971)

Year: Recorded in 1971 (CD Oct 27, 2009)
Label: Sundazed Records (U.S.), SC 11207
Style: Rhythm and Blues, Psychedelic Rock
Country: Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Time: 53:51
Format: Flac Tracks 16/44,1 kHz
Size: 289 Mb

Love Lost, Sundazed's surprise unearthing of all-but-forgotten 1971 session tapes (laid down during the band's brief alliance with Columbia Records), throws a fascinating wrinkle into Love's disintegration. Veering from captivating to frustrating, charming to maddening, it's a typically uneven set. Yet there are moments of sheer beauty, and Lee clearly poured his heart into the grooves. Reinventing himself in the image of his recently deceased friend Jimi Hendrix, interweaving blazing rock with sublime, fly-on-wall acoustic tracks, Dear You, as the Columbia album was to be called, had enough mojo to fuel a plausible comeback.
Evidence that Hendrix's death hit Arthur Lee hard lurks everywhere - in his vocal phrasing and spoken asides, in guitarist Craig Tarwater's high-voltage riffs, in the souped-up bluesy arrangements. In fact, if imitation is the highest form of flattery, Love Lost could be interpreted as a Hendrix tribute album par excellence (although, to be fair, bits of Cream, Mountain, the Jeff Beck Group, and others percolate throughout). "I Can't Find It", which with a bit more work might have been the single, echoes "The Wind Cries Mary"; the stuttering strut of "Midnight Sun" is drenched in Electric Ladyland-isms. And on and on.
These are fine efforts - vicarious pleasures to be sure - that nonetheless get under your skin. "Product Of The Times" even gets away from stock paeans to troubled love affairs for a bit of self-reflective commentary, a flicker of Lee's old songwriting spark. "Product," riding a gutbucket riff and some sizzling lead guitar, and everyman anthem "Everybody's Gotta Live", given a hair-raising Lee vocal, are impassioned, fully realised gems.
Yet, for all the group's chutzpah, Arthur Lee‘s indulgences - a tendency to over-sing into a screech, some cringeworthy misogyny - blunt the impact. Curiously, Columbia assigned no producer for these sessions, terminating the band's contract without releasing a note. A clearheaded producer, one capable of adding some discipline, focus and editing, might well have crafted Dear You into a remarkable rebirth.
(full version: uncut.co.uk/reviews/love-lost-love-5126/)

01. Love Jumped Through My Window (03:23)
02. I Can't Find It (04:51)
03. He Said She Said (03:41)
04. Product of the Times (04:22)
05. Sad Song (02:56)
06. Everybody's Gotta Live (04:03)
07. Midnight Sun (04:13)
08. Good & Evil I (04:25)
09. He Knows a Lot of Good Women (03:15)
10. Find Somebody (03:59)
11. For a Day (02:09)
12. Good & Evil II (02:58)
13. Looking Glass (02:32)
14. Trippin' & Slippin'/Ezy Ryder (06:58)

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