Every Mother's Son has seen a CD release once before, when Collectables reissued their eponymous 1967 debut as The Very Best of Every Mother's Son: Come On Down to My Boat Baby, but Now Sounds' 2012 collection, Come On Down: The Complete MGM Recordings trumps that 1998 release in every way. Sonically, it's way better, it's well annotated by Steve Stanley and, best yet, it has all of the 1967 LP plus its quick sequel, Every Mother's Son's Back, released later that year. Each of these records showcases a band that cheekily defied the psychedelic uprising of 1967. Every Mother's Son were a cheerfully collegiate outfit, containing slight elements of good-time frat humor but leaning heavily on light, sunshiney pop, albeit with a serious East Coast bent. EMS weren't big on beaches and didn't have the show biz panache of the somewhat similarly minded Harpers Bizarre, they just favored bright, happy pop, sometimes slipping into delicate vaudevillian nostalgia. Their debut rocked slightly harder, the second album had elements of Sgt. Pepper's Baroqueness spliced together with the Monkees, and both were quite fun even when -- or perhaps because -- they were so evocative of their time. Surely, there are a few sly party tunes along the lines of "Come On Down to My Baby" -- "I Won't," in particular, has a nifty groove, as does "Allison Dozer" -- and the group was adept at these good times, but the appealing thing about these complete MGM recordings is how it is at an intersection where frat rock, Brill building pop, Hollywood savvy, folk-rock, and nostalgia meet. This is music that could have only been made in 1967, but it sounds like very little that's often pegged as 1967 pop, which is why it's so much fun to revisit. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine|

Rovi