Condemned to Greil Marcus’s dustbin of history, the band would remain unknown to all but a select few, its members in various states of artistic despair, emotional dysfunctional and physical disrepair, tracked down by a few obsessive fans, playing the odd reunion show of variable quality before sliding back into cult obscurity.
Thankfully, the Sand Pebbles are more than an intriguing chapter in a Richie Unterberger obscure musicological treatise; the Sand Pebbles are now, they’re happening and they’re what the kids should be listening to. Dark Magic is the Sand Pebbles’ fifth album, and picks up where the band’s previous album, Ceduna, left off.
If Ceduna took the Sand Pebbles on a journey to the arid edge of the Grateful Dead’s wandering rock’n’roll experience, on Dark Magic the Sand Pebbles pull up a chair around a psychedelic-folk fire graced by the spirits of The Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds and Crosby, Stills and Nash.
At their spiritual heart, The Sand Pebbles are a pop band: Spring Time (Who Hasn’t Lost Their Head) is an exercise in spiritual beauty,River Sparkle glistens like the early morning sun and Dark Magic awakens the dawn with religious reverence. On Occupied Europe (Take Me Across the Water) the Sand Pebbles have catapulted back – or forward, depending on your point of view – to 1984 and the sharp-edge landscape of English post-punk. Close your eyes, turn your head and it’s 1970 all over again, as Another Way to Love takes you to end of one decade, and into another that promises to rectify lost idealism.
And then there’s the triumvirate of acoustic tracks: Long, Long Ago, One of These Mornings and Blue Eyes in Black and White, each brimming with enthusiasm and hope for a world that can only be if humanity faces up to its contradictions, limitations and imperfections. This is the Sand Pebbles at their beautiful best. Thank the deity of your choice for the Sand Pebbles.
In A Word: Kinetic
If You Like This, You’ll Like: The Buffalo Springfield
Key Track: Because I Could
