As the album title indicates, The Mammals have expanded to a nine-piece set up for this follow up to the excellent Sunshiner. Adding past members of the band for a weekend of recording live in a Hudson Valley studio, there’s a sumptuous warmth as the songs tumble out with the ensemble expertly balanced. Less polemical than Sunshiner, the album still addresses the social justice and environmental concerns which stir Ruth Ungar and Mike Merenda, at heart they are still protest singers albeit with superb songs, melodies and performances.
The album kicks off in swell style with Ungar’s husky voice beguiling, over a rippling cosmic country backing as she reflects on the inevitable comedown after a season of festivals on Coming Down Off Summer. The band here are perfect as they swell into a pedal steel gilded outro which recalls the glory days of the good ole Grateful Dead. This dappled dip into seventies styled country rock is maintained on Merenda’s excellent What It All Is, the glorious playing belying the words concerning the fate of young men sent off to war, and reaches its apogee on the breezy rhythms of California with its waves of organ, keening pedal steel and sparkling banjo. Still reminiscent of the counter culture but less cosmic, there’s the incredibly appealing You Can Come To My House where Merenda offers an open invite to stay over a while. With CS&N like harmonies and a welcome mat similar to that rolled out by Brian Wilson on Busy Doing Nothin’, he describes a perfect hangout to chew the fat and fix the world.
Several of the songs are less sunny. Radio Signal has a persistent organ stab over an old time folk melody reminiscent of Wild Mountain Thyme and is somewhat unwieldy until the band soars in halfway through – it’s a song which might be best appreciated live. However, Ungar stomps in with the swampy Someone’s Hurting and then the country gospel funk of East Side West Side, both excellent. East Side West Side kind of updates Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land and Ungar goes back again to the folk tradition on what may be the best song here. Penned by Merenda but sung by Ungar, If You Could Hear Me Now is in the grand tradition of American folk songs with its echoes of early Dylan.
We’ve merely scratched the surface here as Nonet waxes and wanes across its ten songs offering up new delights on each listen. If you can, try to get the deluxe edition which has a second disc with five songs. Here they let it all hang out playing wild folk reels and ragging on Dylan and Etta James.