British psychsters Tintern Abbey released one single in 1967 - “Beeside” / “Vacuum Cleaner” - and then promptly disappeared off the face of the planet. Like most bands, however, they did a fair bit of recording and this collection (courtesy of the great Real Gone Music) collects two dozen of those unreleased masters and stretches the Tintern Abbey story to four LP sides. And it is incredible…maybe not so much for what it is but definitely for what it represents. These tracks are raw, weird, trippy, brash, and loud, and the band’s playing is not always super tight but it does exactly what it needs to do (especially being that these are mostly demos). Listening to these tracks, it’s no wonder the band wasn’t picked up for an album deal. There is very little commercial potential in this material. But that just makes me like it more. Had there been viable, hip indie labels at the time, this band’s story could’ve played out quite differently.
That said, the best tracks on this set are the two sides of that lone Deram single. “Beeside” is a great little psych nugget with a vocal melody that Roger Waters most certainly nicked (for “Grantchester Meadows”) and the flip, “Vacuum Cleaner”, has been mixtape/playlist staple for decades. One of my favorite songs ever. Nice to have both of those tracks here. Elsewhere, were treated to 22 songs of varying quality, in varying stages of completion. Some are super lo-fi and noisy while others sound like they were potential singles that just never got released. Some songs are quite well written while others make little sense. One thing is abundantly clear - this band sounds like no one else. It’s a shame they didn’t go the distance. This collection will feed me for eons.
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