Smokey and His Sister

Okay, first off, gaze upon the wonder that is Smokey Mims' hairstyle. Amy Winehouse would kill for a beehive that good. Briefly, Smokey and Viki Mims were siblings from Cincinnati who supposedly moved to New York in the mid-'60s in thrall to Bob Dylan. You would not guess that inspiration from these songs, recorded in 1966 and 1967 for a never-released Columbia LP (a later album on Warner Brothers did make it out, barely) produced by staff freak David Rubinson, who was working with Moby Grape and the United States of America around the same time. There is none of the freaky majesty of either of those bands on Smokey and His Sister: instead, think of a cross between Petula Clark's Tony Hatch orchestrations and the folkier side of sunshine pop acts like Harpers Bizarre, Spanky and Our Gang and the whole Curt Boettcher/Gary Zekley axis. This is twee pop decades before the term existed, featuring the Mims siblings' equally wispy, delicate voices in front of a full orchestra and the usual batch of session musicians, playing 12 Smokey Mims originals that are long on the ethereal harmonies and languid melodies, but not so much on the whole concept of memorable hooks. Sunshine pop fans will be at least moderately enchanted, but this is no kind of great lost masterpiece of the style, just an entertaining curio.