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Gary Higgins, "Seconds"
In 1973, Gary Higgins and his friends recorded Red Hash, an album that (completely unbeknownst to him) gradually became hailed as a lost psych-folk classic. More than three decades later, he returned to the studio to record this follow-up. The result is most definitely not another minor masterpiece, but it certainly is strange and memorable nonetheless (though often not for the right reasons).
There are two fundamental flaws that immediately and irrevocably sabotage Seconds. The first is a distinct lack of stylistic focus. A plausible explanation is that this album is culled from a haphazard retrospective of material that Gary has written over a span of decades, but that doesn’t make it any less jarring for his heart-on-my-sleeve folk rock to coexist with the Santana-isms of “Don’t Wanna Lose” or the bad-acid-meets-Disney-soundtrack keyboard atmospherics of “Squirrel.” The second, and infinitely more damning, problem is that Gary’s lyrics can be singularly bad. The most uncomfortable moment for me is probably when he strains at the upper limit of his vocal range to convey the words “she came to me on a ten-speed, she came to me on a centipede” with painful earnestness. However, the entire album is a veritable minefield of clumsy rhyming couplets, regrettable poetic flourishes, and awkward bluntness (“puke in the trunk of your car”). The lyrics to “Squirrel” are in an unfortunate category all their own, but I will give it a pass because it hopefully was intended as a children's song (the clumsily and unfortunate psychedelic studio effects remain unpardonable though).
Notably, however, Gary begins “Mister Blew” with the spoken declaration “now there’s just one thing I want everybody to know: it just doesn’t fucking matter” and he makes a good point. The Gary Higgins that made Seconds is a completely different person than the fellow that recorded Red Hash: there is no attempt here to make “art.” Instead, Higgins seems quite content with the fact that he is simply playing music again. Despite its many shortcomings, Seconds shows Gary is still a pretty good guitarist and a rather charismatic and likeable singer. While he never comes close to approaching his past work, genuinely good songs like “3am Trilogy” show serious potential for a creative resurrection. Higgins can be quite endearing when he writes straightforward songs about his own life and his enthusiasm is often difficult to resist. However, I would be remiss if I did not state that I am mystified as to why he dragged his best song out to 13 minutes or how the same person that wrote the words “unassisted moral suicide” could also write “why was the little squirrel so dumb?”
The tragic irony here is that Seconds is actually a much more unique and “outsider” album than Red Hash. Gary Higgins certainly wasn’t the only guy making freaky folk music in the early ‘70s: he was part of a larger counter-cultural zeitgeist. This album, however, is the work of a man who has seemingly stepped out of time and is completely disinterested in the culture around him. While an undeniable failure, it is quite an interesting one. In fact, Gary’s embrace of hopelessly dated synth sounds is perversely charming and actually made me like him more. I guess he just needs some more time to shake off the rust.
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