Jefferson Airplane: After Bathing At Baxter's

After Bathing at Baxter’s

Best song: the Hymn to an Older Generation suite

Worst song: the How Suite It Is suite

Overall grade: 5

If someone asked me to give them an album that divides opinions, I’d give them ‘Tales From Topographic Oceans’. If they asked me for another one, I’d give them this. Depending on who you ask, it’s either the Airplane’s peak as daring writers of great psychedelic songs, or a risk the band took that failed miserably. I don’t quite agree with either of these viewpoints… it’s not as good as Pillow but it certainly doesn’t fail miserably. Instead, it sees the Airplane becoming disillusioned with their hippy, happy-go-lucky style of songwriting and turning to something bolder and more intense.

That’s good. I like that they changed and didn’t carbon-copy Pillow, because the summer of love was over, people were becoming disillusioned with that lifestyle and both music and the wider world were entering a state of change. This album represents that.

The fact that this album is divided up into five suites of two to three songs, and that every ‘I’ in the song titles is replaced with a ‘Y’ makes this album as pretentious as most of ’73-’74 prog (and that’s the second ‘Tales’ reference in this review that really has nothing to do with it.) Seriously, though, this album is clearly proto-prog as well as acid rock and an early version of space rock. Since it’s proto/early/whatever, though, the techniques haven’t been refined yet, and although parts of it work really well, other parts don’t so much.

It shouldn’t come as a shock that the part that works best of all is the Grace Slick-penned tune, ‘rejoyce’. It’s a little bit chilling and a lot of awesome and it grips me from start to finish. I’d be interesting to know why this is her only songwriting credit – is it all she wrote or just all the band liked? Also, why did she write life-changing songs like this and ‘White Rabbit’ on Airplane albums but never had a great solo album?

But the whole of the first suite is good. It’s two unrelated songs, ‘The Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil’ which is Kantner’s take on a White Rabbit-esque song, and ‘Young Girl Sunday Blues’, which are linked by a collage of human voices and random sound effects, like a cross between Frank Zappa and Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Voices of Old People’. From later suites, highlights include ‘Martha’, a tune that’s incredibly dark while proving that the band haven’t forgotten their folk roots, and ‘Two Heads’ – no, the whole of the fifth and final suite is cool. It covers a lot of different styles in its eight-odd minutes and even manages to work in some more unusual Indian instruments. In fact, the whole band seem to have become more confident instrumentally between the last album and this one, particularly Jorma Kaukonen.

First time I listened, I spent two-thirds of this album hoping that the band would play a full-blown acid rock instrumental, a la the Grateful Dead, and then they did, but it was a huge disappointment. I mean, does ‘Spare Chaynge’ really go anywhere? It’s not fulfilling. It’s similar to the way that lettuce is technically a food, but it doesn’t fill you up. Even if it creates diversity by being there, I’d have rather the track was replaced by something that plays more to their strengths. Or just worked on more, I don’t know.

It’s not the historical artefact that Pillow was, but it’s great in its own way, and should sit alongside it in anyone’s 60s rock collection. (yes, I group CDs by release date.)