Thinking Back

Gordon Jackson's only album sounds a little like a Traffic LP with a singer who isn't in the band. The similarity is really no surprise, since Traffic men Steve Winwood, Dave Mason, Jim Capaldi, and Chris Wood all played on the record, and Mason produced. Other notables with connections to the Traffic family tree or Marmalade label also appeared, including Luther Grosvenor; Rick Grech, Jim King, and Poli Palmer of Family; and Julie Driscoll. There's a languid, minor keyed jazz-folk-psychedelic vibe to the songs, which have a meditative, spontaneously pensive air, appealingly sung by Jackson. Touches of Indian and African music are added by occasional tabla and sitar. What keeps this from being as memorable as Traffic or some of the other better late-'60s British psychedelic acts is a certain meandering looseness to the songs that, while quite pleasant, lacks concision and focus. That was a quality also heard in the album from the same era by fellow Marmalade artist Gary Farr, Take Something With You, and while Thinking Back is better and more original than Farr's effort, the songs are more interesting mood pieces with a yearning, mystic tone than they are outstanding compositions. At times this is like hearing psychedelic sea shanties (as on "My Ship, My Star"), such is the lilt of the tunes, though hints of blues and more playful pop-psych whimsy are heard in cuts like "Me and My Dog." [The 2005 CD reissue on Sunbeam adds lengthy historical liner notes and five bonus tracks, including the non-LP B-side "A Day at the Cottage"; a haunting, sparse home demo of "My Ship, My Star"; single mixes of "Song for Freedom" and "Sing to Me Woman"; and a long version of "Me and My Dog."]