Jimmy Campbell - Half Baked (Remastered) (1970-71/2009)

Prior to the 1970 release of Half Baked, Jimmy Campbell had been making interesting but uneven music for about five years that always seemed to hint at the breakout of a standout talent, but never quite seemed to deliver all the way on that promise. This, his second album, was very much in that continuum -- it had too much of worth to dismiss, but wasn't quite the sort of thing that demanded attention. Campbell's assets remained undimmed, those being a winning way with a meditative folk-pop melody, a likably shaky voice, and an overall engaging persona of a fragile, sensitive, somewhat reticent soul. Here, however, that fragility at times verged on solipsistic eccentricity (occasionally accented by similarly eccentric chamber pop orchestration), particularly on "In My Room" (in which Jimmy resides "with its broken door, the posters on the wall of Hitler, John, and Paul"), the jaunty yet desolate romantic ballad "Dulcie (It's December)," and the title track, which starts with him croaking "If I'd have known what would happen, I would have stayed in bed," and gets more despondent from there ("If anyone calls, say I'm dead"). Occasionally, the poetic loner sensibility threatens to tip into something more worrisome and suggestive of unhealthy withdrawal, especially on "Will Not Mind," whose hollow and creepy whimsical romantic optimism is one of the closest parallels you'll hear to Syd Barrett's solo work. When Campbell tries to rock out, the results are pretty pedestrian, and much less distinguished. That leaves about a little more than half a pretty good album here, and the sense of listening to a talented recluse with hints of the kind of genius possessed by Barrett (or the early Bee Gees at their eeriest), but not quite enough follow-through to get placed on the same plane. If some brave reissue company combined the best of this with the best of his solo debut (1969's Son of Anastasia), you'd have a pretty good if imperfect CD, but as of this writing, that hasn't occurred.