Miracle Mirror in Bloomington, MN

Change was in the air when
the Golden Earrings
made their third album in 1967;
psychedelia
was sweeping the U.K. and Europe and the release of
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
had raised the bar in terms of production and arranging styles.
The Golden Earrings
had made some changes of their own as well -- rhythm guitarist
Peter De Ronde
had left the group, and lead singer
Frans Krassenburg
was replaced by
Barry Hay
.
Miracle Mirror
was very much an album of its time, and predictably sounds a great deal different than their first two LPs. Like
Just Earrings
and
Winter Harvest
,
clearly reflected what was going on in the British music scene at the time (even though the band was Dutch), but the heady atmosphere of 1967 made room for musicians to follow a number of different paths, and
were eager to investigate as many as they could in the studio.
"Born a Second Time"
is a pastoral acoustic number with
Hay
contributing some accents on flute.
"Magnificent Magisterial"
sounds like some cross between
the Who
the Byrds
, with chiming 12-string guitars and crashing lead lines. Horns and strings fill out the grand-scale
pop
number
"Crystal Heaven"
and the folkier
"Gipsy Rhapsody."
A harpsichord adds a touch of the Baroque to the melancholy
"I've Just Lost Somebody."
The
blues
-influenced
"Must I Cry"
features some spacy slapback echo and reverse-gear guitar loops. You name the new-in-1967 sonic innovation, it's probably somewhere on
, but what hadn't changed for
was the songwriting talent of bassist
Rinus Gerritsen
and guitarist
George Kooymans
and the group's uniform excellence in the studio; the confidence and sense of adventure that informed their first two albums was in full flower here, and if there are some moments on
that sound a bit pretentious all these years later,
' instincts were spot-on most of the time, and this album has worn the test of time more gracefully than many other works from the first acid era. ~ Mark Deming