The Guess Who: Wheatfield Soul : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Despite being from the unheard-from hinterlands of Winnipeg, Manitoba, the Guess Who manages to convey the sense of individuality that has made them one of the top rock bands in Canada in this LP and a current single, "These Eyes," crossing the border into the American hit lists. Though "Wheatfield Soul" as label for a supposedly unique sound is a hype, the Guess Who are getting together.

Their single is distinctive despite being strung out on a collection of songs that could be subtitled Who the Guess Who Listen To. They aren't the Yardbirds, Beatles or Doors, despite any impression they might try to give. They aren't super-anything, aren't progressive to a notable degree or strikingly innovative. But they are good.

Material played by the group is all self-written, with guitarist Randy Bachman splitting duties with singer Burton Cummings. However, you wouldn't be sure without checking the label. Shadows of bigger groups flicker through most of the songs; one song about a rose, for instance, is almost a direct steal from the Yardbirds' rose of a different color on Little Games. Another cut, ten, minutes of "Friends of Mine," is son to "The End" by the Doors, a semi-serious parody of all the people currently taking artificial psychoses too seriously. But who is being put on?

Though no one element can be isolated and granted unique function as carrying force for the Guess Who's sound, there is something very personal in the best of their material. The single, "These Eyes," displays the probable formula most clearly, and it comes out Cummings. As much actor as singer, Cummings puts over his songs through exaggeration, whether dwelling on being snotty, threatening, sympathetic or tender.

He does best on snotty and threatening. The singer is a natural for the neo-Morrison school of temperamental manipulation, except that he's been doing his very similar thing since pre-Doors days back home in Winnipeg.

Instrumentally, the Guess Who are so adequate that they're scarcely noticeable as individuals. They do typical nice things with sitars and guitars and drums and organs, handling it all with a lot of technique and no special distinction. They're primarily a vocal group, left with little irregularities and occasional lapses! instrumentally they are too well-rehearsed to be exciting.

This LP, in common with most try-too-hard first major releases by midwestern bands, adds up to a bland one that can be quite addictive if you let it try more than once. If the Guess Who's music is too derivative to get full credit as their own (and it is, it is), call it the major problem of midwestern music: the distillation of accepted influences from all over into something you'd swear you've heard before. On Wheatfield Soul, at least, a good native midwestern band has managed to include enough of themselves to warrant a fighting chance as artists.