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May 28, 2025 Web Exclusive By Hays Davis

The San Francisco-based Lamb was a band that thrived in its early days on the creation of genre-blurring songs that entranced coffee house patrons without there being a burden of hit potential. With their later Warner Bros. albums, Lamb clearly reached for a wider audience, and the band’s appearance in the 1972 documentary film Fillmore seemed to suggest a possible breakthrough. Though wide commercial acceptance never came, Lamb’s earliest material finally emerges on An Extension of Now: Unreleased Recordings 1968-1969, revealing a duo at their most intriguing and beguiling at a time when their vision was still coming into focus.

For the duo that formed Lamb, the formidable vocal presence of singer Barbara Mauritz was matched by guitarist/songwriting partner Bob Swanson’s creative, lyrical arrangements and presentation, and they were joined by other musicians who came into the picture at various points. Extension brings together folk, blues, and classical elements with an experimental spirit, in a group of songs that cross the ripples of Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left, early Fairport convention, and a bit of The Velvet Underground, to name a few. Along with the straightforward rocking of “Barbara’s Soul” and “Visitation (The Learning Process),” the duo is equally at home with the blue acoustic mood of “Flotation,” a live “Phantom Fayre” that sets an unsettling mood for their appreciative audience, and the trippy “La Plaza De La Paz.” Even if Lamb never quite found a commercial breakthrough when they were active, An Extension of Now strongly suggests that it’s never too late for an introduction. (www.realgonemusic.com)

Author rating: 7/10