Original released on LP ABC 594
(US, 1967)
Even though Tommy Roe was coming off two huge chart hits in 1966 (Top Tenners "Sweet Pea" and "Hooray for Hazel"), he felt the need to grow his hair and get with the changing times. Producer Curt Boettcher's work with the Association earned him a gig with Roe, and together they began working on changing the singer's good-time rock & roll image into something a bit groovier. Instead of junking Roe's basic tight and rocking sound on 1967's "It's Now Winter's Day", the two made the wise decision to add massed vocal choirs (provided by Boettcher mainstays like Dotti Holmberg and Michele O'Malley as well as future Millennium members Sandy Salisbury and Lee Mallory) and semi-psychedelic effects on top and keep the rhythmic drive and soulful punch at the foundation. Strip songs like "Aggravation" or "Sing Along with Me" of their sonic frippery and you have classic Roe-styled bubblepop tunes. Roe helps keep the project grounded by holding the lyrical flights of fancy down to a minimum. Apart from the goofy outer space love song "Moontalk," Roe writes the same basic kind of lightweight love songs that made him popular. The album is a very successful blend of old and new, the arrangements are always interesting, and Roe never sounds out of place. The song that makes the album more than a quirky detour in Roe's career is the astounding "It's Now Winter's Day." Built on atmospheric minor chords as well as a lachrymose and seductive vocal from Roe, the tune is layered with atonal, reverbed tape effects, a shimmering vocal chorus, and so much icy warmth it sounds like Boettcher is channeling a frozen Phil Spector. The track sounds like nothing else on earth, so it's no surprise that it wasn't a hit at the time and resonated with lovers of left-field pop fans for years to come. It's also not surprising that after one more psych-pop album, 1967's "Phantasy", Roe went back to his formula and cranked out a couple more hits before the decade turned, including the number one smash "Dizzy" and "Jam Up Jelly Tight." (Tim Sendra in AllMusic)
Original released on LP ABC ABCS 610
(US, 1967)
In early 1967, Tommy Roe took a leap into the world of psychedelic pop, and with the help of wonder producer Curt Boettcher created a minor soft psych gem with the "It's Now Winter's Day" album. Adding walls of heavenly vocals along with inventive and strange arrangements to Roe's tough and propulsive rhythmic underpinnings was a stroke of genius that sadly wasn't repeated on the follow-up from the same year, "Phantasy". While the sound of the album is less elaborate and therefore less interesting, the main problem is the quality of the songs. As on "Winter's Day", Roe wrote the bulk of the songs on "Phantasy", and it may have just been too much to ask for him to deliver another album's worth of good songs so soon. The melodies are weak and the lyrics sound forced, especially "Plastic World," where he laments that the world has become a place where "money buys everything," which surely sounded trite even in 1867, much less 1967. The two songs penned by an outside writer are even worse, as the usually reliable Sandy Salisbury (a Boettcher regular who made great records under his own name and with the Millennium) digs two clinkers from the back pages of his songbook, the saccharine "These Are the Children" and "Goodbye Yesterday." Only a couple songs ("Little Miss Sunshine," "The You I Need") have any of Roe's trademark memorable hooks that might inspire listeners to dance, to smile, or at least to make it to the end of the album. Along with being an artistic flop, "Phantasy" was a commercial disaster that prompted Roe to go back to his hitmaking formula of the recent past. Quite often this kind of retrenching fails miserably, but Roe was rewarded with his first number one single since 1962's "Sheila" when "Dizzy" topped the charts in 1969. "Phantasy" became a forgotten record, and like many "lost" albums, uncovering it gave people a chance to see why it was lost in the first place. (Tim Sendra in AllMusic)
