The recordings they made as The Peppermint Trolley Company are no less interesting. Along with that late-Left Banke sound that dominates their self-titled 1968 LP, there are flashes of hard psych in "Beautiful Sun", which melds the Who of "I Can See for Miles" with the Who of "Bucket T." and vocal scatting straight off a Manhattan Transfer record. "I Remember Long Ago" sounds like S.F. Sorrow-era Pretty Things stripped of their menace. Among the love songs and tunes about how nice bells sound, there are gently delivered but firm-minded criticisms of war, religion, racism, capitalism, and simple-minded patriotism. Their detractors may dismiss them as bubblegum, but The Peppermint Trolley Company were hardly mindless. "Fatal Fallacy" takes the light experimentation of the rest of the album too far with its meandering structure, dissonance, and lack of a strong melody, but the rest is so breezy, pretty, and imaginative that I think you can forgive the guys one over-reaching folly. And since it's appears at the end of Peppermint Trolley Co., it's super easy to skip.
As reissued on vinyl by Out-Sider Music with Guerssen, Peppermint Trolley Co. mostly sounds superb despite a somewhat off-center spindle hole that doesn't affect the sound. Oddly, only the single "Baby, You Come Rolling Cross My Mind" sounds like it was taken from an inferior source. The rest of the record sounds like the PTC cut it last week. As usual for Guerssen, the package includes a spiffy color insert with extensive liner notes.
