Don't buy The Car Over The Lake Album if you're looking to make any sense out of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. What on earth were these guys thinking back in 1975, when they followed the Top 5 rock radio success of "Jackie Blue" with this glorious, freaky hodgepodge?
Sometimes perceived as a country-rock band, the group didn't synthesize genres so much as ricochet between rock, folk, country and pop forms. The Car Over The Lake Album begins with "Keep On Churnin'", a wry rocker that might have pleased fellow Missourian Chuck Berry. Then it shifts to a lightly trippy '70s falsetto stoner tune called "If I Only Knew" that is somehow reminiscent of early-era Chicago (the band, not the town, and I know you probably don't like 'em). Next up is "Leatherwood", a Randle Chowning-penned loper that sounds like the Flying Burrito Brothers if Gram and the boys let the Marshall Tucker Band's Toy Caldwell sit in on lead guitar. And where did the haunting, ancient-sounding "Out On The Sea" come from?
If this album's reissue comes without much explanation, it does arrive with good vibes, good singing and good tunes. It's not all good, as "Thin Ice" is precariously close to faking the funk and "Whippoorwill" trades mellow for melodramatic, but what's right is right enough that sins are quickly forgiven.
Some of the best stuff here originally appeared as "The Little Red Record", a three-song acetate that was stuffed inside the LP sleeve. "Journey To The Center Of Your Heart" is a hillbilly stomper, and "Time Warp" is among the most inventive three-chord bits of weirdness committed to tape in the 1970s: "Like Buddha at the sermon when he didn't say a word/If you think you hear a feather, it's a feather that you heard." As a grouchy musician friend once ordered, "Whatever this shit is, turn it up."
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