By 1968, the Elevators were pretty much disfunctional, what with the continuous drug busts and Erickson's prison terms (and later, mental hospital term where he's said to have almost underwent Jack Nicholson's Cuckoo fate). However, they still made one last strain and, considering that Erickson was far from the band's main songwriter - more of a Morrison-type guru instead - released a third album, on which most songs were written by guitarist Stacy Sutherland. Actually, a lot of the stuff here is said to be outtakes from the former sessions; and Erickson's compositions are limited to two, while his vocals are only present on two more; overall, this is a Sutherland/Tommy Hall show all the way. And indeed, the Doors comparison does not end here - Bull Of The Woods does give the same impression that the Doors' two post-Jim albums seem to convey: far less idiosyncratic, nowhere near as innovative or creative, somewhat devoid of personality, but overall quite listenable, even if there's no real big reason to listen to it unless you're a big fan of the previous two albums. If the debut was the Elevators' take on sloppy garage, while Easter Everywhere incorporated folksy influences, then Bull is their bluesy album, milking minor chords to death and featuring standard bluesy progressions on quite a few of these numbers. With Roky almost not there, there's much less weirdness to be found, but overall they're still going psychedelic and they expressly say it by running one simple gimmick throughout - delaying each and every guitar so that in the end you're, like, so overwhelmed by the echo and the "reverberation" and all that you're ready to scream: "Yeah enough already! Stop being artsy with me!".
The big problem is, I can never remember how these songs go. The sound they're getting on here is nice, with the trebly drums and the delayed guitars almost wiping out any negative effects of the electric jugging, but somehow the melodies totally escape me. Well, it's sort of all right with the slower bluesier numbers like 'Livin' On', because when you're slow and bluesy you're obviously going for mood instead of hook, but even when the band throws a fast-paced "angelic" ballad in the fray, something like 'Til Then', I can't discern one really interesting thing about it. I remember being impressed by 'Rose And The Thorn', though, with its very slow, very creepy pacing and vocals that sound amazingly like Mick Jagger's scowling on the more out-there Satanic Majesties numbers.
Apart from that, well... See, I've always suspected that Hall and Sutherland were the main musical backbone of the band, while Erickson just gave their material additional pizzazz, but the truth was that this backbone never presented anything special. They were competent songwriters, unlike some of their contemporaries (Seeds?), but without Roky, this material just doesn't really cut it. There's a lot of cool sonic stuff going on, but it all gets the same in the end. The heavily overdubbed, heavily delayed and echoed guitar buzz on 'Street Song' is pretty cool upon first listen, but I don't hear any real conviction here without Erickson's mighty wail; and these guys' singing is just your average stereotypical acid rock singing - guys who can hit the right notes but cannot convey any real emotional power with their voices. No surprise, then, that the two Erickson-written and Erickson-sung numbers on here stick out as major highlights, even if in the context of the two previous albums they would have looked like minor ones. 'Never Another' starts as an overdriven folk-rocker propelled by the jug, additional electronic noises (or so it seems) and even a little horn section, but then the horns take a left turn and start going totally berserk in a near-avantgarde mood, after which the song picks up steam, adds wild lead guitar and has Erickson throwing a fit right in the studio - in short, a song that begins normally and then goes into all-out madness. And the final number, 'May The Circle Remain Unbroken', is just three minutes of reverberated guitar droning going in circles indeed as Roky chants the title - in the process inventing the blueprint for Neil Young's Dead Man soundtrack twenty-five years too early. As simple and repetitive as the song is, it might just be the most authentic psychedelic recording of theirs. It's also quite moving in a strange way - maybe because it was the last track on the last album of the "original" Elevators and could be seen as sort of a musical testament.
So don't get me wrong: it's not a bad/offensive record, but it predictably suffers from all the predictable consequences of the predictable loss of the most unpredictable member. I rate it an overall 10 because I'm sorta partial towards Sutherland's guitar tones, but if you're not, feel free to avoid it altogether. After this release, Hall soon left the band, and that was the end of the Elevators - not that the Elevators would really fit in the rapidly changing musical world even if they did stay together, of course. Their brand of psychedelia might have been amazing for 1966, but it was already outdated by 1968, and that's a sad grinding fact. Review taken from http://starling.rinet.ru/music/13th.htm#Woods