Pink Fairies – Neverneverland

Projects connected to 60’s luminary Twink seem to have a way of finding their way into collectors’ hearts. The Pretty Things, Tomorrow, Santa Barbara Machine Head (one of my personal favorites) and his own Think Pink album all paved the way leading up to him hooking up with the bulk of The Deviants to form The Pink Fairies. The band’s debut sprang out of a single for Polydor that contains what are arguably the band’s most powerful tracks, “The Snake” and “Do It,” the latter of which was even covered by The Rollins Band on their album of the same name. The debut from ’71 is one of those albums that finds its way into the crossover between hippy ideals and hard rock’s rising sun.

There are moments when the band shows their roots in Twink’s past, hints of Tomorrow’s Pink Floyd worship on “Heavenly Man,” slinking half-hearted anti-war creeds on “War Girl and the twee psychedelics of title track “Never Never Land.” The band’s eclecticism often gets the better of them and they’re distinctly at their best when they turn on the power and lean hard into rock as an ethos, but then again, there were several others in ’71 who’d had the same indulgences and came out with more of a household reputation. The charmers here warrant this one falling much higher on the list of classic rock castaways, but in the end this is a release for the heads, and perhaps “Uncle Harry’s Last Freakout” can best attest to that. Still its got enough bright spots to keep it floating to the top of your classic psych collection from time to time and there are certainly some playlists that could benefit from a little padding from The Fairies.