Orange Bicycle

Personnel: Bernie Lee (vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, steel guitar); Wilson Malone (vocals, piano, harpsichord, organ, Mellotron); John Bachin (vocals, bass guitar); Rob Scales (vocals); Gary Hooper (guitar); Kevin Curry (drums, percussion).
Liner Note Author: Mike Mastrangelo.
Arranger: Wilson Malone.
A somewhat late-in-the-day attempt at psychedelic pop, this album does have a few advantages, mostly in the way it's executed -- for starters, it isn't as wimpy as a lot of U.K. psychedelic pop was during this period; Orange Bicycle plays hard and generates a fairly hard sound, despite their pop orientation, the wattage turned up fairly high and the vocals pretty intense. The album is top-heavy with outside songwriting, Elton John, Bob Dylan, and Denny Laine all playing prominent roles as composers, with Laine giving the group perhaps their best moment with his "Say You Don't Mind", where they even sound a little bit like the original (Roy Wood-era) Electric Light Orchestra. Still, they're neither fish nor fowl, too heavy to pass for pop but not intense enough to be taken too seriously -- the material is a little too off-kilter to have worked at the time, or to be of anything much more than historical interest today. ~ Bruce Eder