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Apr 01, 2010 Web Exclusive By Hays Davis

Kicking off a career with a sabotaged debut album would most likely be the professional undoing of most artists. Sandy Hurvitz, better known today as Essra Mohawk, obviously subscribed to the "That which does not kill me..." dictum as she began her ill-fated life in music.

After releasing a mid-'60s single as a teenager and having her songs recorded by The Shangri-Las and Vanilla Fudge, a chance meeting brought Hurvitz into Frank Zappa's orbit in 1967. She so impressed Zappa that he made her a de facto member of The Mothers and planned to produce her debut album.

Sandy's Album Is Here At Last!, released in 1969 on Zappa's Bizarre/Verve label, was not the album that Hurvitz had in mind. Zappa fell into a snit when Hurvitz made a suggestion regarding the drums for one song, and he promptly turned over production duties to Mother multi-instrumentalist Ian Underwood, whose anti-production goes a few steps beyond austere. Though additional instruments were to have accompanied Hurvitz and her piano throughout, drums and flute only appear on several tracks, and the sound of the entire record is strangely muted, as though the mics were placed behind thick curtains.

Hurvitz/Mohawk has aptly described the album as "raw." While stronger songs such as "All This Time Going By" work well in their basic state, the album would undoubtedly have would have benefited by more instrumentation. The unadorned Hurvitz with piano can be a challenging listen, especially through Underwood's lo-fi veil, which Mohawk describes in the disc's notes as a deliberate obstruction at Zappa's direction (with preferable takes and instrumentation being erased). Hurvitz's soaring vocal talents get a showcase here, and though while she deserves credit for freely eschewing verse/chorus/verse for more of a meandering approach, the end result can waver between rewarding and wearing. (www.essramohawk.com)   

Author rating: 5/10