Released in October 1967, ‘We Are Ever So Clean’ was the wonderful debut album by Blossom Toes, one of Britain’s most imaginative bands of the late 1960s. Originally known as The Ingoes, the band featured Brian Gooding (guitar, vocals, keyboards), Jim Cregan (guitar, vocals), Brian Belshaw (bass, vocals) and Kevin Westlake (drums, percussion). Signing to Giorgio Gomelsky’s newly formed Marmalade Records in 1967, the band recorded their debut masterpiece throughout the Summer of that year.
Upon its release, it was described by Melody Maker as “Giorgio Gomelsky’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, although this was unfair. While the album did indeed reflect the style of the burgeoning British psychedelic rock movement, the album revealed Blossom Toes to be an innovative band and was a highly original work with such classic tracks as ‘Look At Me I’m You’ and ‘What On Earth’.
Blossom Toes existed for a short period in the late ’60s, transitioning quickly from an R&B/beat band to embrace Baroque instrumentation and vivid, cheery psychedelia on their 1967 debut “We Are Ever So Clean”. Released just four months after the Beatles’ world-shaking and similarly toned Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and weeks before The Who Sell Out, the album lived in the shadows of bigger musical events, and Blossom Toes lingered briefly in obscurity before disbanding in 1969.
After a few decades passed, however, the band, and their debut album in particular, began to take on a more clearly defined importance in the bigger picture of ’60s psychedelia. The bright, curious melodies of tracks like “What on Earth” are cut from a similar cloth as material the Kinks and the Pretty Things were releasing at the same time, but are filled out with an overabundance of brass, strings, and theatrical orchestral elements. “What’s It For?” feels like a happier, more thoughtful cousin of the Who, and songs like this and “The Remarkable Saga of the Frozen Dog” or “The Intrepid Balloonist’s Handbook, Vol. 1” carry the same charming British sense of absurdist humor as Bonzo Dog Band.
Blossom Toes’ song structures are unconventional, often including several sections that would most likely be cut from the average ’60s pop song. Even so, they never get assertive enough to reach prog territory, keeping a mild and approachable demeanor with light vocal harmonies and bounding bass grooves on “When the Alarm Clock Rings” and getting into backwards guitar solos and paisley-coloured dissonance on rocking standout “Look at Me I’m You” without losing their friendly melodic sensibilities. Childlike tunes like “People of the Royal Parks” indulge in all-out chamber twee. “We Are Ever So Clean” bears many of the hallmarks of better-known albums from its time, with its various pieces recalling everything from the soaring joy of the Idle Race and the happy-go-lucky mod pop of Small Faces to all of the previously mentioned bands.
Despite these clear similarities, the thread of genuine excitement and naïve positivity that runs throughout “We Are Ever So Clean” keeps the album from feeling like the result of Blossom Toes merely following the trends of their time. There’s barely a trace of darkness or anxiety in these wide-ranging songs, putting the album in a rare class of well-adjusted psychedelia.
Unfairly overlooked at the time of its release, ‘We Are Ever So Clean’ is regarded as one of the greatest psychedelic rock albums ever. This new official limited vinyl edition has been newly remastered and was cut at Abbey Road Studios. The LP is a facsimile of the original 1967 release and features an illustrated inner bag.
The album was reissued in 2007 by Sunbeam Records along with bonus tracks.
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