ALEXANDER "SKIP" SPENCE - Oar LP

180 gram vinyl.

"Genius and madness coexist brilliantly on Oar's deceptively still waters. This sonically faithful and lovingly documented reissue will only further its legend." - Rolling Stone

"The perfect distillation of psychedelic heaven and hell, it can now take its place as one of the all-time great rock albums." - MOJO

Skip Spence was sometimes thought of as the least technically proficient of Moby Grape's three guitarist/vocalists - but he always made up for it with unmatched manic energy and that unquantifiable magic in his songwriting that few career songwriters manage to conjure.

Of course, by 1969 and the release of this much-celebrated (but still obscure) solo album, Skip (now billed as Alexander) was long gone from the ranks of Moby Grape. There's a lot of mythology surrounding Spence's departure from the band, his time in Bellevue Hospital and the genesis of this album, which has generated a sort of Syd Barrett-like reputation for Spence as some sort of acid messiah. Whilst it's easy to project an impression of the man's mental state onto this collection of songs, we think it holds up as fascinating and idiosyncratic work without reading too much into or presuming too much about its creator's psyche.