Lazy Smoke – Corridor Of Faces

After listening to a couple thousand of these late sixties albums I have to it that Under Sky's keeps reappearing in my brain at the strangest times even in 2025. Most of those material is as simple but a couple songs like Salty People are 30 years ahead of it's time from a psychedelic standpoint in my opinion.

It's uncanny how John Pollano sounds like John Lennon, or like The Aerovon's Tom Hartman for that matter.

Only 100 extremely rare copies came with the complete cover, of the 1969 US release on ONYX. 500 were privately pressed & only 100 came with the front & back cover slicks. Some had just the back slick or just the front. If you score one with both slicks (front and back) then you have 1 of 100 or less depending on how many have survived

Inspired by the Lennon aspect of the Beatles but the songs are Lazy Smoke's. The songs are all distinct, have appealing, memorable melodies and a "smokey" atmospheric, somewhat lo-fi basement vibe, much like what would appear in droves and in earnest during the indie underground pop and rock explosion (Sebadoh, k Records, Shrimper, etc.) of the late '80s and 1990s. Rarity aside, the longevity of appeal of this album to Psych collectors and aficionados of the music of that era rests with the total encoming quality and personality of the songs themselves. Ranked as "copyist" by some but I personally rank this in my "Top 10" of worldwide underground Psych albums from that era.

Here's printed number 283 on the inside of the thick cardboard sleeve. Indeed, must agree: Great vibe through the album, exceeding the jackpot-issue! Similar paste-on cover as the original.

Simply because an album achieves almost legendary cult status does not make it good … and in the same light, it does not make it bad either. What we have here with Lazy Smoke, with the band’s name being a reference to marijuana, is a group hailing from Massachusetts during the late 60’s who used The Beatles as their guiding vision, complete with a lead singer [John Pollano], who pushes the envelope with his John Lennon influences. With Pollano’s writing also flying under the flag of Lennon, the band lays out a series of songs very much in the moment of light weight popish psychedelic numbers of the day.

Purposely, I reframed from using the word “derivative,” because Lazy Smoke were sincerely on an adventure, it’s just that their adventure didn’t belong to them. Corridor Of Faces is a composition where the band does not use their own natural voices, preferring to sound as if they’re coming from some indistinguishable TransAtlantic spot on a map that only they hold, leading me to suggest that if they had believed in themselves enough, and certainly built on their influences, the material found here might just have sounded quite good.

Of course all this brings me to the question of why so many hold onto this release so dearly. Yes, there’s the fact that it’s a limited pressing, something that’s a Holy Grail for many collectors, yet for me, it’s as if Lazy Smoke are hiding behind some satin Sgt. Pepper suites that hang on their frames poorly, in the fashion of someone who knows what they know from watching others, instead of finding their own footing. Of course I always felt that there might be something that I was personally missing, and that if I spent enough time with the album that I might catch the spark … but I never did, no flames, no smoke, just a charming atmosphere or transparent haze, though without substance. Yet having said that, I can think of a dozen of today’s psych bands who might want to take a stab at this material, and present it with the ion it so very much deserves, because in all honesty, there is something here, it’s just that Lazy Smoke can not bring it into the light of day, which is rather frustrating for me … so perhaps I’ll have to give it another go after all these years and see if it catches fire.

Review by Jenell Kesler