One day someone will invent a time machine but, if you are musically oriented, you won’t need to buy one as the past is, and perhaps always will be, a source of inspiration for the musicians of today. Scott Hepple and The Sun Band have fuelled their musical mojo with psychedelic rock influences and, duly, their album “Ashes to Wildflowers” sounds like it has freshly dropped out of the open doors of the aforementioned time machine.
This album is indeed a decent facsimile of the real thing with guitars, as you might expect, driving the songs along a rambling path to their destination and that makes for an interestingly organic counterpoint to the usual approach to making music in these days of sampled homogeneity. It goes without saying therefore that evidence of the band’s reverential love for the sounds of then is always clearly obvious and some might even suggest that this album, perhaps as a reflection of the time period of its inspiration, might be best appreciated with one of the herbal accompaniments that were fashionable back in those halcyon days.
So, “Ashes to Wildflowers” has that blast from the distant past vibe down pat and Scott Hepple and The Sun Band deserve credit for recreating what has already been done in such a diligent manner.