By the point Lucas climbed into his attic to chop his demo for legendary Warner Bros. boss Mo Ostin, he was a married father of two. The primary six songs have the hushed gentleness of somebody making an attempt to not wake the infants downstairs. Additionally they radiate the bittersweet sensitivity of a younger guardian making an attempt to reconcile all of the competing wants of his new life.
These are, in some ways, lullabies of self-help. The honeyed waltz of “It’s So Simple (When You Know What You’re Doing)” is an SOS from somebody who feels a tad misplaced, who has by no means been capable of transcend the moments when issues “bought slightly troubled.” The hypnotic sway of “I’ll Discover a Means (To Carry It All)” feels just like the final sigh of somebody abandoned by everybody round them, simply earlier than they resolve how greatest to maneuver on. And the narcotic sweetness of “It Is So Good to Get Stoned” is a plea for soporific oblivion, exhaled by somebody who’s no less than making an attempt to acknowledge that they’ve grownup tasks ready. “Oh, I want that I had been the breeze/Or a chook with feathers to catch the solar,” Lucas sings within the ultimate verse, voice rising as he reaches for anyplace however right here.
Lucas has been chronically in comparison with Nick Drake, lifeless for a yr earlier than he self-released these songs in 1975, however I eternally consider Elliott Smith. Like Lucas lengthy earlier than him, he stacked his personal beautiful harmonies on tape, as if constructing a military of 1 to be able to fend off his personal impending doom. And so they each may sound so shiny that you can, no less than momentarily, neglect the truth that they had been singing from the underside of their existence, from nadirs of being.
As Dutkewych notes, Lucas was a child of Greek immigrants, rising up on the types of the Balkans a long time earlier than rock’n’roll pervaded the American adolescent expertise. He was within the devices answerable for these sounds, however his catholic tastes didn’t cease there. He studied sitar within the late ’60s in Los Angeles with Ravi Shankar and Harihar Rao, the grasp and his scholar. He turned Motown’s on-call “unique devices” man in Detroit.
Although he solely performs guitar on the second aspect, its three tracks are all testaments to his curiosity in unknown types. He flirts with funk above a pal’s conga line on “Robins Experience,” then warps the essential buildings of the Delta blues throughout “Sonny Boy Blues,” a playful articulation of the identical escapism heard on the primary aspect. However it’s the finale, “Love & Peace Raga,” that feels most poignant greater than 50 years after it was made. He glides over, round, and underneath a tambura’s undulations, countering rapid-fire acoustic licks and bent notes that talk to his sitar coaching with extra affected person passages that counsel he’s on the lookout for some type of emotional clearing. You’ll be able to hear the turmoil of his life right here, plus the timeless hope that one thing adjustments.