In 1967,
the Human Beinz scored a hit single with their feedback-laced cover of
The Isley Brothers' "Nobody But Me", and for a brief and fleeting moment the boys from Youngstown, Ohio were bone fide rock stars. While their first album wasn't anything out of the ordinary, when they went into the studio to record their second LP, they were determined to create something unusual, and you can't argue that they succeeded with
Evolutions. An amusing pastiche of neo-psychedelic excess,
Evolutions is a far cry from the slightly trippy frat rock of their hit; "The Face" is a tale of lost love drenched with horns and strings, "Close Your Eyes" is a delicate, mostly acoustic plea for hippie-era togetherness, "My Animal" is an oblique pseudo-protest number leavened with sound effects, and "I've Got to Keep on Pushing" is a showcase for Richard Belley's snarling guitar leads. But the real descent into the maelstrom comes with the album's last two tracks; the country rock workout "Two of a Kind" concludes with the sound of someone tearing apart a piano for several minutes, and the seven-minute "April 15th" gives Belley room for all the guitar freak-out-age he ever dreamed of, which may be a bit more than most fans actually wanted to hear. The Human Beinz are a better and more imaginative band than one might expect on
Evolutions; Mel Pachuta, Ting Markulin, and Mike Tatman are a solid rhythm section, the songs (mostly written by
Lex De Azevedo, who also produced and arranged the album) are pretty good, and even when the album's pretensions seem silly, they don't quite sink into embarrassment. But a cloud of Nehru folly hangs over this album, and while
the Human Beinz pull it off (just barely),
Evolutions is still the work of a band struggling desperately to chew what they've bitten off. ~ Mark Deming