The Lovin’ Spoonful’s Daydream

Title: Daydream

Label: Sundazed

An excellent album of mostly originals from this jug band, pop, blues, rock combo. This LP is accompanied by two other, contemporary releases: Do You Believe In Magic (1965) and Hums of The Lovin’ Spoonful (1966). The big news for all three releases is that they vinyl has been cut using the original Kama Sutra mono masters.

Listening to the band’s big hit, a theme tune of sorts, Daydream, the first track on the album of the same name, the presentation is clear, open and airy. John Sebastian’s vocal delivery has an almost treated feel, as if he’s twisting his own vocal chords, while the slowly rhythmic guitar offers a welcome band of bass. The acoustic guitar that introduces itself a few seconds into the song is the early star on this track. It offers an immense amount of detail, effectively revealing the metallic nature of the strings to startling effect. The deeps soundstage adds a rounded, full, rich tone to the cosy nature of the arrangement. Yet, through all of these pleasantries and sonic highlights, playing the LP with a stereo cartridge – even though I might have been using a rather nice Koetsu Black – in mono mode (my Icon PS3 has a mono switch), the mono presentation only offers a portion of what its truly capable of. Switch the cartridge to a Miyajima Zero, for example, and the entire LP transforms itself from a rather thin sounding, strident presentation to a full, rich suite of upper mids and strong, hefty bass.

If you want to get the best from this and the other Loving Spoonful releases then you’ll need a mono cartridge with a 0.7mil tip, which allows the tip to retain contact with all of the groove. With such a set up, this LP will, literally, ‘sing’.