The Pretty Things

By David Auerbach

This album is legendary in certain circles, and has a good degree of indie quotient going for it: Barbara Manning covered one of its songs. One of the great albums of the '60s, SF Sorrow is a drug-adjusted spew of ambition, depression, and heavenly tunes.

The Pretty Things had a few minor Stones-derived hits, including their most famous song, "Rosalyn," which was covered by David Bowie and Marc Riley. Then, evidently upset about their lack of fame, they sequestered themselves in the studio and popped out SF Sorrow. Besides attempting to cram in every aspect of the quieter side of post-Pepper's British music, it's also acknowledged as the first "rock opera." But unlike every other rock opera ever made, this is actually a good album, arguably a brilliant album.

The music tends to cross the Kinks ("SF Sorrow is Born") with the Small Faces ("Baron Saturday"), making space for abrupt references to the Beatles, Left Banke, the Beach Boys, and Love. Talented and impassioned vocalist Phil May sings the story of an average British boy named Sebastian Sorrow, who grows up, goes to war, and gets a girlfriend who subsequently dies in a horrible balloon accident.

Eventually, a peculiar figure named Baron Saturday shows up (who, if you're like me, will instantly remind you of The Fat Controller in Will Self's My Kind of Fun) and takes Sorrow on a fantastic journey that reveals to him that his life is crap. Lonely and miserable, Sorrow grows old and dies a tragic death.

Granted, it's more strange than captivating, but the low-key frustration is so ever-present that you really have to wonder what drugs they were on to produce such existential disillusionment in 1968 (barbiturates, maybe?). The cumulative effect is such that by the bathos of the last track, "Loneliest Person," I was convinced that the Pretty Things had already mapped out enough territory for the thousands of angst-rockers in their wake. Ray Davies would hit similar ground with the Kinks' Arthur and Muswell Hillbillies, but this is the original artifact.

And, of course, the tunes. If you like any of the groups mentioned above, SF Sorrow ranks with the best of their work: gentle, melodic, and catchy. But even in 1968, hardly anyone heard it, and perhaps edged on by the moronic success of Tommy, May turned the band in the direction of hard-rockin' idiocy. So if ever one is inclined to think that musical tastes have gone downhill since the '60s, take heed from this album that they've always been lousy.
(SPV Recordings)

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