“I’m a big fan of the self-titled debut – and sole – album by The Rationals. Loosely originating from the same scene as their fellow Michigan rockers MC5 and The Stooges, The Rationals possessed all of the associated raw, fuzzed-up energy, but they tempered it with a dreamier, more sensitive, harmony-laden sound rooted in 1960s R&B, psychedelia, experimental folk and the groovier side of instrumental library music.
“To put it simply, this album rocks, but it also floats, simmers, sizzles and dreams you into places you never thought you would go.
“I can’t remember exactly when I first heard the centrepiece song, Glowin’, but I remember how it made me feel: a transcendent, spine-tingling sensation followed by a gentle realisation that different levels of consciousness can be experienced simultaneously. Those 18 seconds of hissy rain and thunder before the instruments begin hold just as much sway in my soul as the ensuing song itself.
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“Strange and purposeful production choices abound. Half of the songs are followed by a small instrumental section of the album’s flute- and acoustic-guitar-heavy final track, Ha Ha, cut and pasted to service the friction of the different musical energies throughout. The tape audibly distorts under the sheer cacophony of the more raucous garage-rock moments, while the traditionalist R&B numbers are followed by abstract and impressionistic pieces such as the uncomfortable and swaying Deep Red, with its yearning, drunken vocals and descending chord patterns, or the languidly harmonic, yet soulful, Temptation ’Bout to Get Me. Genuinely, a lost gem.