Right at the height of popularity for Paul Revere and the Raiders, the band s core power trio of Phil (Fang) Volk (bass), Drake (The Kid) Levin (guitar) and Mike (Smitty) Smith (drums) left to pursue their own more ambitious musical goals. Subsequent lawsuits and a run of bad luck meant that the first, self-titled album by their new band, Brotherhood, would be delayed, and received little notice at the time. Yet, by mixing a wealth of socially-conscious original numbers with hard-rocking reinterpretations of tunes by the Mamas and the Papas and Joe South, Brotherhood was a band brimming with promise…

The chances are that, had ABBA never come along making Benny Andersson (and his three partners in the group) into an international pop/rock star, no one outside of Sweden would ever have heard of the Hep Stars. They were the hottest rock band of the mid-to late '60s in Sweden, however, considered by some to be that country's answer to the Beatles. The Hep Stars also charted 20 singles in their own country and had hits in the Netherlands, as well as building a following in Germany - and their CDs are exported around the world as a result of the ABBA connection. It also turns out that they were a pretty good band, too…

This is the debut long-player from the southern California-based Strawberry Alarm Clock – the title track of this album topped national singles charts in December of 1967. As the cover art might suggest, their image practically defined both the musical as well as peripheral aspects of the pseudo-psychedelic counterculture. However, below that mostly visual veneer, Strawberry Alarm Clock actually have more in common with other "Summer of Love" bands such as Love and Kak than the bubblegum acts they have long been associated with. Prior to Strawberry Alarm Clock, the band was initially named Thee Sixpence and issued a 45 – "In the Building" b/w "Hey Joe" – in the spring of 1966. As legend has it, none of the actual bandmembers sang lead on the hit single; the singer was in fact a vocalist named Greg Munford, who was attending the session as a visitor.

This is where fans of the group can sort of stop and settle down at last. MCA Records had previously let the Mamas & the Papas' music out on CD in a trickle; the debut LP was upgraded and a compilation of remastered hits showed later in the decade, but the rest was left to languish. This two-CD set makes up for that neglect, assembling all four of the quartet's '60s albums on two CDs and augmenting them with the mono single versions of "I Saw Her Again," "Words of Love," and "Creeque Alley," plus the non-LP single "Glad to Be Unhappy." One just wants to luxuriate in the sound of this reissue and its little details, like the rhythm guitar on "Do You Want to Dance" that cuts right through the air, the string basses on "Go Where You Want to Go" that sound like they're just across the room, and the rest of the first album. The real keys to the value of this set, however, are the second and third LPs by the group, superb albums which were either never reissued on CD at all or never upgraded from the mid- to late '80s.

See for Miles' 1990 compilation The Best of Idle Race contains a generous 25 tracks – just over half of what the Idle Race recorded. This means that it does have the great majority of the best material the band recorded, and it would satisfy everyone outside of the rabid collectors who need anything. The catch is, if you're into the Idle Race, you need everything, so this collection is essentially a stopgap until you can track down (or afford) EMI's 1996 complete collection, Back to the Story. Even then, this may be a little more listenable, since it boils the group's interesting but erratic career to its very best – which is obscure British psych at its best (in other words, it's for the collectors who will seek it out, not anyone else).

Few bands have invigorated French pop like La Femme over the last decade, and in 2021, they're coming to make all of our lives better. Paradigmes, their much-awaited third album, offers a shift in how we see the world, a kaleidoscopic vortex to a different, more vibrant dimension. After Psycho Tropical Berlin in 2013 and Mystère in 2016 which both reached Gold status in France and got them to play hundreds of shows around the world, the Paris-based, Biarritz band continue to dazzle listeners with their new record. Within this album of beautifully-curated electropop you will hear everything from coldwave to yéyé, Kraftwerk to the Velvet Underground, all distilled and sequenced and psychedelicized so that it sounds uniquely La Femme. The title track is a brassy blast of sizzling electro that imbues the spirit of flappers and philosophers, cabaret and art deco and Fritz Lang's masterpiece Metropolis, all underpinned with a touch of lyrical melancholy. Paradigmes is an album that lives in the moment, even if that moment is a challenge right now. Its fantastical voyages will undoubtedly provide an escape into a world beyond our own.

Crumb’s second album, Ice Melt, takes its name from the coarse blend of salts that you can buy from your local hardware store for $9.99. When sprinkled on your wintry steps, this mixture absorbs water and gives off heat, transforming the ice into a viscous, briney slush and, eventually, nothing at all. Beginning with the dynamic chaos of “Up & Down,” and ending with Crumb’s closest thing to a lullaby, Ice Melt's ten tracks combine, like ice sculptures melting into a glistening puddle.