The New Creation

Item: Troubled
Author: Jamie Lee Rake

Troubled

(1970)

Reviewed by Jamie Lee Rake

Discogs Bandcamp Apple Music TIDAL Spotify YouTube Music

Label Companion RecordsThe Phantom Tollbooth2005

experimental garage rock psychedelic rock

While California/Jesus hippies were making singer-songwriter, folk-rock or (more rarely) mind-blowing psychedelia, hundreds of miles north in Vancouver, British Columbia, The New Creation's apocalyptic sound would have likely had brows furrowed among its southerly brethren and sistren with the love beads and hand-tooled leather Bible covers.

But what a sound it was! Troubled, recorded in six hours in 1970 and pressed onto 100 LPs on its own Alpha Omega Records, sets itself apart with an inventively garage band sound, crazily inspired songwriting and an admitted lack of virtuosity by the English-born mother, her son and family female friend/drummer comprising the band.

That combustible duo of unashamedly blunt, though creative, lyricism (Lorna Towers and son Chris formed the act as a response to their city's drug culture) and questionable musical competence packs a strong, off-kilter punch. As stated by Canadian DJ James Brouwer in the 20-page booklet in the Digipak of this CD reissue, a hybrid of The Velvet Underground and The Shaggs (the Massachusetts sister trio said to be believers, too) makes an apt description of The New Creation's work.

With VU in mind, the opening "Countdown To Revolution!" is the trio's "European Son" or "Sister Ray"--long, noisy, disturbing, unsubtle. Biggest difference being that The New Creation is going on about nearly every woe of the world and its Godly answer in a spoken rant over faked explosions and dissonance.

Easier to digest, "New Creation" sounds like an undiscovered minor key Maranatha! Music praise and worship chorus. The gentler "Wind" could work congregationally, too.

The band made room for snarky humor where issues met doctrine, too. "Dig!" ("The Origin Of Man") mimics English music hall quaintness, though belied by a vivid anti-evolutionist stance. "Sodom And Gomorrah" tackles sexual licence and moral decay with less levity and more orneriness.

The New Creation remains an anomaly among the acts to emerge from the move of the Spirit that generated so much now-collectible musical ministry. The band had considered moving to California to better position itself to make an impact with its uniqueness. The band figured better of it, blaming a lack of talent.

More precisely, it can be said to be a naive talent that resulted in remarkably innocent, sweet music nevertheless instilled with wit and godly fire. If even the indie-est of Christo-rock nowadays sounds slick and calculated, Troubled blasts through with its own doubly outsider ruckus.

4 tocks