Bobby Brown

Prayers Of A One Man Band

DEL RIO RECORDS & TAPES. DL/LP Californian starchild’s 1982 psychedelic world view.

Where to begin with Bobby Brown? With the accolades from Carl Wilson and Kenny Loggins in the press blurb for someone practically unknown even at the time, who made his own instruments, and albums, while working on sailboats in Hawaii? Or the new age speak scrawled over the artwork of this, his third album, a semiconcept global travelogue? After a Tim Buckley-influenced 1972 debut, The Enlightening Beam Of Axonda, it was 10 years before Brown made this terrifically bonkers Caribbeantinged AOR, sung in the melodramatic camp fashion of PJ Proby, hiccups and yodels included. For that, it feels more 1965 than ’82, and more 1974 too, from odes Steamboat Mama and Lady Tennessee to Holland-era Beach Boys timbres (one song is even titled Sail On). Most out-there moment: the falsetto-topped, synthburbling The Cry Of The Wild, exemplifying a uniquely forged splurge of Outsider Art.