The Chocolate Watchband - Inner Mystique [Sundazed Bonus Tracks] (CD)

All Music Guide

The group's second album, like its first, features too many tracks that really aren't the Watchband, but this time some of it even works. Side one of the original long-player consisted mostly of a bunch of psychedelic studio noodling courtesy of musicians hired by the producer, but even among these, "In the Past" is a bejeweled psychedelic treasure that ought to be in any collection. The rest is pure garage-punk, raw and undiluted, including savage covers of the Kinks' "I'm Not Like Everybody Else" and Bob Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," and "Medication," rendered here in a version superior in its lustful decadence to the original by their labelmates the Standells. Reissued in unbelievably good sound, with bonus tracks, on Sundazed Records in the '90s.

- Bruce Eder, All Music Guide