Back to the Garden

Richard Marsh, as Sky Saxon, led the seminal garage band the Seeds in the 1960s, turning out two classic singles, “Pushin’ Too Hard” and “Can’t Seem to Make You Mine,” before the band immersed itself in the Summer of Love, a summer that Saxon never truly left the rest of his musical career. By the dawn of the ’70s, the Seeds were done and Saxon, drifting on flower power, retreated from the musical scene to take exile in Hawaii, by now calling himself Sky Sunlight Saxon. He re-emerged in the ’80s with bands like Starry Ride and Firewall, and in the ’90s he began to concentrate on writing and recording, although his sound and approach still leaned heavily on the Summer of Love template, which made his songs sound sincerely quaint. At their worst, they seemed like outtakes from a Cheech & Chong album, only they weren’t funny. Following a Seeds’ reunion and tour in 2002, Saxon returned to writing and recording, releasing several albums, some under his own name and some as the Seeds, including this one, Back to the Garden, which was self-issued in 2008 on Airplay Records, a label Saxon and Mike Oak founded. Following Saxon’s death in 2009, Global Recording Artists began to reissue Saxon’s post-Crescendo work, and now we have Back to the Garden in circulation again with three bonus tracks added. That’s the good news. Unfortunately, aside from “Mystery Man,” “Summer of Love,” and the chugging “Power Tripper,” all of which show some spark as timepieces, most of the tracks here suffer deeply from flower power hangovers. Still, you want to root for the guy. It was, after all, an intoxicating summer, and love is a notoriously hard act to follow. – Steve Leggett