Gram Parsons: Another Side Of This Life: The Lost Recordings Of Gram Parsons 1965-66

If anything, Another Side Of This Life, a collection of previously unreleased Gram Parsons recordings, only further mythologizes the man revered as the godfather of country rock. Though the sound of the short-lived International Submarine Band's sole album, 1968's Safe At Home, was honed later, there's no mistaking it for anything but the self-dubbed "Cosmic American Music" Parsons would later bring to The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and his solo work. But aside from an early run at "Brass Buttons," the material here, recorded as recently as a year before his breakthrough ISB efforts, contains scarcely a suggestion of what would come later. These sessions showcase Parsons, alone with a guitar, very much in the thrall of the New York folk scene in which they were made. Sounding eerily like Phil Ochs at times, in both his urgent playing and his forceful singing, Parsons displays little of his country music's easy charm and creeping melancholy as he ambles through originals and covers of songs by Fred Neil, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Tim Hardin, and others. The R&B numbers "Searchin'" and "Candy Man" reveal a wider range of influences, but provoke little change in Parsons' approach—the sound of talent yet to find the elusive spark of genius.