Guerssen Records
Dandelion (F,1979,re.2007)**°
This late ‘70s album has a great style fundament with some 60s garage and acid folky influences, a great melancholic mix which I have not heard with many groups, except for a few exceptional 60s tracks from here and there. Something likewise was started by Green On Red in the early ‘80s (with some of the same elements, but in a later style) : a psychedelic organ making almost psychedelic the melancholic sadness in the songs. Dandelion plays garage-like drums, slow psych electric guitar, both played rather primitively and inspired from the beauty of the songs. The guitars (pedal-electric and acoustic) are mixed a bit amateur-like, a bit too much to the fore ; all in all this creates a very charming effect, while the vocals are mixed more to the background, confirming in this mix very well the beautiful sadness of the songs. Just one, more acoustic track is sung, in Spanish, by a female vocalist. Despite aspects that could put the album down bu certain listeners, still a recommended album.
The album was pressed originally as a 300 edition, on a small label called Le Kiosque D'Orphée, and is worth much now. The group did a limited second album in pop wave style in 1981 and quit as a band in 1983. Over the next ten years Jean Christophe Graf continued to work and make demos under the bands name.
