The Cycle Is Complete

You’d have to be a hardcore Buffalo Springfield fan to recognize Bruce Palmer’s name; the bassist was overshadowed by Neil Young, Stephen Stills, and Richie Furay. Palmer’s only solo album, The Cycle Is Complete, came out in 1971 on Verve Records and almost instantly vanished into obscurity (if not for this 2010 reissue). It starts with “Alpha Omega Apocalypse,” a jam of almost 17 minutes that sounds as if the listener has stumbled into the band playing midway through. Amid percussion, violin, guitars, flute, oboe, and bass, you can hear the soulful and seemingly random scat singing of a man credited as Rick Matthews. This actually is the late, great superfreak Rick James—who'd previously recorded with Palmer and Young in the Toronto-based (and Motown-shelved) project The Mynah Birds. The following instrumental, “Interlude,” simmers down before “O-X-O” again picks up the pace, jamming off into the stratosphere. But unlike the instant psychedelia of “Alpha Omega Apocalypse,” this one is a slow build into the epic 10-minute space-rock closer, “Calm Before the Storm.”