Mr. and Mrs. Garvey - Mr. and Mrs. Garvey (1968/2018) Hi Res

One of many obscure underground rock albums issued by Columbia or its subsidiary Epic in the late '60s, Pat & Victoria Garvey's Mr. & Mrs. Garvey seems to have sold remarkably few copies considering that it came out on a major label. Not only that, it was produced by one of the most successful producers of the time, Bob Johnston (most known for working with Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash), and featured top Nashville session dudes like Kenneth Buttrey, Norbert Putnam, Wayne Moss, Charlie McCoy, and a young Charlie Daniels (with keyboards by a young Craig Doerge, who would become one of the top L.A. session men in the 1970s). Not that it was a great album, although it was fair. Like some other obscure albums of the late '60s (like Penny Nichols' Penny's Arcade), though it had a folk-rock base, it mixed that with early singer/songwriter influences and dashes of Baroque pop, psychedelia, and country-rock. The married couple wrote all of the songs and sang them with strident, bittersweet harmonies reminiscent of those of Ian & Sylvia (though not as good). In fact, the record itself sounded like something that could have happened if Ian & Sylvia had gone more determinedly pop-commercial, in a trendy countercultural sort of way. There were slightly whimsical story-songs with some flighty fantasy-tinged lyrics ("Today is the first day of the rest of my life" goes the very first line of the album), occasionally infused with references to circa late-19th century Americana. There were piccolo, horns, violin, French horn, and oboe on top of the straightforward folk-rockish bed. But there weren't captivating songs, melodically or lyrically, relegating this to the period piece rack.