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The Left Banke - Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina (Sundazed)

14 January 2012

Speaking of long-overdue reissues (with the 1992 CD collection There’s Gonna Be a Storm long out-of-print), how about this one along with the follow-up, 1968’s The Left Banke Too? This is the better of the bunch, though, with classics tracks like the titular hits along with “I’ve Got Something on My Mind” (sampled by Jens Lekman on “Black Cab”), “She May Call You Up Tonight”, the underrated “Evening Gown”. Almost every track is a classic here. This is as perfect a marriage of beat-group moves (check out “What Do You Know”, an almost note-for-note homage to The Beatles’ Rubber Soul, particularly Ringo Starr’s “What Goes On”) and their later, full-on baroque pop orchestration as I’ve ever heard and belongs in the same conversation as other classics of the genre and time period like Love’s Forever Changes and The Zombies’ Odessey and Oracle.