Pearls Before Swine

★★★★ Balaklava – 50th Anniversary Edition DRAG CITY. CD/DL/LP

Tom Rapp’s potent anti-war message, restored shortly before his death in 2018. Featuring Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s nightmarish painting The Triumph of Death on the cover, Pearls Before Swine’s follow-up to revered psychedelic debut One Nation Underground stands as 1968’s most striking anti-war statement. Tom Rapp’s evocative narratives come framed by multitextured instrumentation, with sound effects, whispered counter-vocals and field recordings of Florence Nightingale and the bugle from the Charge of the Light Brigade (chosen to symbolise the ultimate futility). Shimmering and hallucinatory on Translucent Carriages and I Saw The World, with Guardian Angels’ string quartet doctored to sound like an arcane 78, Balaklava’s universal message has lost none of its resonance (only dated by its cover of Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne). Rapp succumbed to cancer during production of this vividlyremastered restoration, leaving it as a stellar memorial to his visionary talent along with those it mourns.