Coming fresh off a period of playing chaotic, intricately involved jazz-psychedelia (In Search of Spiritual Junk Food, the band's first official ensemble recording), which aroused critical comparisons to Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, intermingled with Church of Betty's characteristically idiosyncratic excursions into music from the Indian subcontinent, Chris Rael reassembled the band's original live lineup to record this whiz-bang one-off of volatile, mutated rock roll. A bookend album to the Hand's initially unreleased first album, Second Hand, Blossom Decay was recorded and mixed by Kenny Siegal in the same 48-hour stretch and on the same equipment. As a result, it is drenched in sonic immediacy. Trading in Betty's previous complexities for scorched-earth arrangements and contagiously passionate playing, it is a blazing diamond in the rough. This was perhaps not a novel sound for fans who had followed the band live for years, but it was certainly a fresh approach in its recorded catalog up to this point. In fact, it is something of a pivot point, and definitely a preview of the incomparably rich albums that were soon to follow from the band. The songs are uniformly superb. Composed while in the throes of a difficult personal period in Rael's life, they are as naked emotionally as they are sonically, while the band's powerful performance and the album's unvarnished surface further expose the raw nerve endings of the music without diluting its accessibility in the least. (Cross of Gold and Magic Key would later get dusted off and polished up for Tripping With Wanda.) Thankfully unearthed, Blossom Decay passes by in an overwhelming, invigorating flash. ~ Stanton Swihart, Rovi

1		Venus Flytrap
2		Read My Book
3		Cross of Gold
4		Meat
5		Walk With Me
6		Magic Key
7		The Conversation
8		Wait
9		Wonderworld
10		Last Week