This is truly a truly exceptional piece of exploitation. Not for the music it purports, but the manner in which it works. Beginning with The Psychedelic Moods of The Deep singer and songwriter Rusty Evans set out to concoct some studio based psychedelia to cash in on that ever so gullible youth culture. That first creation, which Evan’s dubbed the Deep wrenched out a single disc of bland rock with just enough psych snuck in as to make it almost relevant. The Deep’s one disc was released rather early during the psych explosion and Evans even returned a year later, although with a new band and a different label.

Working under the name of the Freak Scene, Evans again sought to find an audience amongst the newly freed long hairs roaming the streets of every big city. This time, Evans was actually able to cobble together something that doesn’t seem like a total sham. There are some points at which any listener is gonna cringe in disgust – it gets pretty cheesy. But perhaps that was just Evans and company attempting to convince those hippies of the disc’s validity. Either way, the cover looks pretty tripped out. And that alone probably didn’t hurt in the market place.

Regardless, some of the more straight forward rock tracks come off convincingly. “Behind the Mind” is nothing more than a revved up and spaced out beat track with some ghostly singing behind it all. And due to the fact that Evans didn’t attempt too much more than that – although there’s a good deal of production nonsense going on in the background – the song ends up being a pleasant, if not second tier, Byrds’ styled rock track. It’s not as adept as that super group, but what is?

With the good, there’s also the bad. The track “We Shall Overcome,” which isn’t what you might think, almost works theoretically, but sadly, not in practice. Instead, the song that you’d expect to hear functions as the background to a rally which focuses on an anti-black folks rant or two. The statement that Evans is attempting to make here – whether genuine or not – if done tastefully, could have functioned. As is, though, what results is a bitter mélange of nonsense. It’s a relic, a trapping of the times, nothing more.

The duplicitous Evans only complicates understanding Psychedelic Psoul. It’s really difficult where to figure reality ends and the charade begins. The speed up electric guitar on “Rose of Smiling Faces” is intended to sound like a sitar. But did the musician just use the speed of the tape to ape that sound so he wouldn’t have to learn a new instrument? There’s no way to tell at this point, but the fact that neither of Evans’ ensembles made it out onto the road should lead one to believe that it was.

Subsequent to this failure, Evans quit doing the rock thing and resumed his work as a folk singer. I guess that’s good except for the fact that if you’re a phony in one genre, you’re a phony in all genres. At least Psychedelic Psoul has a few redeeming qualities as opposed to its predecessor.