19-year-old Zappa protégé’s 1969 debut
Essra Mohawk, while then still performing under her birth name of Sandy Hurvitz, released this album in 1969 for Frank Zappa’s Bizarre Productions. Zappa quickly handed production over to fellow-Mother of Invention Ian Underwood, who seemingly had no talent for or interest in producing the album. The sound quality is that of demo tracks, which gives this a sense of performance innocence but obscures Hurvitz’s lyrics. There are instrumental cameos by saxophonist Jim Pepper and Jeremy Steig, and Hurvitz is accompanied by bass and drums on a few tracks, but mostly Underwood leaves her to wander around original compositions with only her piano.
Once you adjust to the poor production quality you’ll find Hurvitz expresses herself flowingly, like a meandering version of Laura Nyro or a less pointed variation of the young Janice Ian; she sings and plays as if the songs were extemporaneous. There’s clearly talent here, and Mohawk would go on to a successful career as a singer and songwriter (she’d  already written the haunting waltz “I’ll Never Learn†for the Shangri-Las), but the seeds of that success were obscured by Zappa’s hostile indifference and Underwood’s lack of production chops. Collectors’ Choice’s domestic reissue adds the bonus track “Life is Scarlet,†whose lyrics were printed on the original album’s back cover, but whose music was omitted from the record. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com] 