Incredible! Kaleidoscope

They’d said goodbye to Chris Darrow, a truly great songwriter, who’d gone off to join the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, but that wasn’t enough to stop Kaleidoscope in their tracks: Kaleidoscope’s third album, Incredible! Kaleidoscope, didn’t suffer overly for his absence. With David Lindley, Solomon Feldthouse, and Templeton Parcely (a.k.a. Max Buda, a.k.a. Connie Crill, a.k.a. Chester Crill!) steering things, the group’s psych-folk-rock was still fully formed: roughshod blues numbers, like “Killing Floor” (a.k.a. “Tempe Arizona”), slid nicely alongside the country reels of “Petit Fleur”; the spiky raga of “Banjo” and a sly glide through traditional song “Cuckoo” lead things beautifully into the twelve-minute “Seven-ate Sweet,” a lengthy drawl that sees the group getting real loose. It’s still kinda puzzling how under-heralded this lot are, given the strength of albums like this one.