#0080: Buffalo Springfield - Buffalo Springfield Again [****]

Opening with a riff that is too close to Satisfaction for comfort, Mr Soul is the stomper you would expect given my preamble.  The lyrics quickly rescue it from being another hack 60s copy of something successful by coming in earlier than expected and carrying that intriguing weirdness of psychedelia so typical of the time.  I can imagine a couple of listens in, I'll enjoy this song more and more.

So, what now?  Buffalo Springfield is a name I vaguely recognise among the Springfields I have known, the others being Dusty and where the Simpsons live.   Not being immediately recognisable as an iconic artist name I just assumed the next track would continue where the first had left off.  But no, it's a pleasant country stroller that quits while it's ahead.  It is followed by an equally short and equally violent deviation in style from the previous track.  This one, Everydays, a soft blues with very nice piano support.

Track 4 is an ethereal song that floats by inoffensively, although there's something about it that demands another listen.  There are layers there that I haven't quite latched onto - mainly because I'm writing this with an ear infection.

And we're back.  Bluebird is another stomper and it seems the pattern is being set for this album to hold my attention by flitting between these four styles with deft studies in each.  It finishes with a lovely little cadenza on acoustic guitar that leads smoothly into a jangly banjo, country playout that wouldn't sound out of place in Deliverance.  

Hung Upside Down isn't really a blues but it carries a lot of that flavour with its crashing rock anthem feel and the chorus as proudly, stadium-singable as the main guitar theme.  

You come off the back of this feeling a bit drained, like you've just had an unexpectedly energetic shag.  You lie exhausted but satisfied, praying for the ride not to start again and as if reading your mood, the album presents you with a delicate, swishy love song on acoustic guitar that would grace the mix-tape of any lurve pad.  

Okay, break's over people.  It's time for the horns and the funky bass to make their entrance on Good Time Boy.  This is pure soul from start to 2:11 when it stops, leaving me begging for the solos to continue.

Rock And Roll Woman quickly makes me forget my disappointment, however, with its beautifully layered harmonies and sounding very much the harbinger of Steely Dan.

This unexpected display of magnificence is rounded off by Broken Arrow, a song of mixed styles and sections, which at six minutes (and given the album's average song length of two and a half minutes), is comparatively a progressive rock epic.  The sections are really crammed with odd displays of virtuosity, singsong melodies, rousing crescendos and irregular time changes.  Then a low clarinet pops up out of nowhere like When I'm 64 and it plays out into a heartbeat to fade.

I am dumbfounded at the scope of this recording.  So I look up a track list I can refer to while writing this review and discover this is the work of Neil Young and Stephen Stills.  

D'oh.