Pig In A Poke

Fickle Pickle. Carve their name with pride. If you know this band, you'll probably have an expanded reissue (there are a couple). If you don't, this original version will be enough to leave you gagging for more, which is the way it should be. A UK studio supergroup of sorts, they were big in Holland but managed to avoid success anywhere else.

It's a blisteringly great sixties pop album, which apparently nobody but the Dutch were looking for in 1970. Perhaps its tuneful good vibes seemed inappropriate to the grim times of its release, when UK counterculture occupied itself with drying its drizzle-sodden greatcoat on the bedsit radiator and skinning up on the cover of Taste's On The Boards. Sinful Skinful is just way too happy, too melodic, too lovingly played and sung. Too pop.

If you don't have this already, prepared to be Blown Away (track 9).