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The Free Design
You Could Be Born Again ("3 Stars")
Stars/Time/Bubbles/Love ("3 Stars")
Light In The Attic
Soft-pop group so good Stereolab named a song after them
Like The Association and The Fifth Dimension, The Free Design - the four Dedrick's brothers and sisters from New York - specialized in a rococo harmony-pop whose vaulting complexities elevated it far above more prosaic easy listening. On their second album, You Could Be Born Again (1968), they're at their best negotiating a path between extreme joy and willowy etherealism. Occasionally, their covers ("California Dreamin", "Happy Together") are merely inoffensive. But when Chris Dedrick's songwriting and arranging skills are stretched ("Ivy On A Windy Day", a great take on Duke Ellington's "I Like The Sunrise"), the results are striking and unearthly. Stars/Time/Bubbles/Love (1970) is more expansive still, with the likes of "Bubbles" and "That's All, People" revealed as hygienic, ingenuous rethinks of psychedlia and funk. Whimsical, but lovely. - John Mulvey
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