West Of The Moon, East Of The Sun Dept.

We called them "The Incredibles" back then, and they were. Unique, too. No one, I think, was in their tree. They grew the tree themselves and then they climbed up into it and threw strange fruit down to us, and some was bitter and some was sweet, but it tasted like nothing else.

If ever there was a visual expression of what LSD did to your world, the first two Incredibles albums [above - Ed.] are it. From the Elektra art department to The Fool. The *eponymous* first album is full of swell tuneage, including a *problematic* instrumental. The songs are cranky, creaky, like music boxes made of twigs and wire. Is it folk music? We didn't think so, didn't care what you called it. It's timeless, elemental, poetic, heartfelt, lyrical, rural, and generates its own natural electricity.

The second album isn't such a giant step as it looks. Clive Palmer is on the hippie Journey To The East (no internet, GPS or Rough Guides), and it's a tad more experimental - sitar rubs shoulders with blues piano, and song structures start to get weird - but it's still purely Incredible, melodies snaking through tinkly jungles of instrumentation. There's nothing twee about the Incredibles. This isn't Donovan music for pixies. Sharp minds are at work.

The avenues opened up by 5000 Spirits led to The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter [left - ED.], possibly their masterpiece (although some give that honor to the *sprawling* double album Wee Tam And The Big Huge, released, incredibly, the same year). The Incredibles story is a long one, and their influence is underplayed and unexpected (Led Zeppelin were big fans), but these three albums are enough, if you're unfamiliar, to get the journey started, right here, right now.

As another lucid dreamer said, the road goes on and on;

Still 'round the corner there may wait
A new road or secret gate;
And though I oft have passed them by,
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun

Go here for swell *content* on Clive Palmer and COB, and here for the Strangelies.