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Fat Mattress was the band’s debut LP (they only released one more, in 1970) and it squeaked onto the charts, going to #134 on the US album chart. The sole single, “Magic Forest,” a funky little ass-shaker with trippy hippie lyrics, charted but only in the Netherlands at #11. Less funky and even more trippy English countryside twee (think fairies, gnomes, Stonehenge – you know what I mean) is “Walking Through a Garden” but honestly the whole record is just dripping in late 60’s vibes. It opens with the flute-forward track “All Night Drinker,” the flute performed by Chris Wood, founding member of Traffic. I didn’t know that until I just now looked it up but even before I could hear the Traffic influence woven through much of the rest of the record. “I Don’t Mind” feels like a mashup of Amboy Duke’s “Journey to the Center of the Mind” and all Beatles releases from ’67-’69. “Bright New Way” has an Americana-Grateful Dead-hippie (less twee, more twang) while “Everything’s Blue” leans jangly hard blues rock…a little Them influence maybe. We picked up Fat Mattress at a record store in Appleton (Eroding Winds) over Labor Day weekend – this one might not be staying long in our collection.

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Here’s the Dead playing “Not Fade Away” at Alpine Valley in ’89:

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The band itself seems to view their record through a prog-rock lens that’s got 50ish years of blurry goo smeared on it, never cleaned from back in the era of the 70’s epic concept album. From an article on Nuvo, frontman Corey Standifer says of the plot of Lady of Many Faces (inspired by keyboardist Brooke Rice’s dream of a three-faced woman), “There’s the Wizard, who is unfortunately in his own prison. He’s pure, but he doesn’t know it yet. Same with the ‘Hidden Hermit of the Hills.’ He’s a total nomad of sorts, who lives by his own book. But the Lady [of Many Faces] needs him in order to fulfill this prophecy of good and spreading your true potential. The ‘Doom Tomb Giant,’ however, is wanting to take that away from them. The song ‘Phantom Erasion’ is essentially the concept of wiping away all the negative forces within your life and really trying to tackle that as best as you can. The Lady has many faces, so [that equates to] many characters and many concepts. But she represents really digging inside of your inner self and exploiting your selfless soul.”

Here’s the entire album, performed in order at their record release show in Indy in November 2024.

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*The Romanus label does not appear anywhere on the record, cover or lyric insert. However I got the LP directly from the Romanus label so I know they manufactured and distributed it. Not sure why Frankie didn’t include it as the label for this release; his previous solo release Turning from 2021 does sport the Romanus label.

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