Description
Culturally, Father Yod and the Source Family were mysterious and controversial entities of the early ’70s, tying together one of America’s first health food restaurants, cult-like communal living, and psychedelic rock & roll. Before dying in a bizarre hang-gliding accident in 1975, Father Yod served as the spiritual leader for his commune as well as the director and visionary for Ya Ho Wha 13, a musical extension of the Source Family that reflected their experimental beliefs with raw psychedelic jams and group freak-outs. Under various monikers, Yod and Ya Ho Wha 13 independently released nine LPs of their acid-bathed sprawl, and some accounts have them recording countless hours’ worth of additional unreleased material. Ya Ho Wha collects some essentials from the Source archives, including selections from private press albums from Ya Ho Wha 13 and spin-off group Father Yod and the Spirit of ’76, as well as unreleased recordings from the vaults. The compilation does a great job of balancing the two spheres of Yod and the Source crew’s musical approaches. Fully improvised tracks like “Ho,” “I’m Gonna Take You Home,” and “Oh Ya Ho Wa” are meandering and often have a menacing tone. Even when adhering to basic blues-rock structures, these jams are loose and fractured. On the other hand, more structured songs “Every Morning,” “Lady,” and “Different Dreams” — all taken from the 1974 album All or Nothing at All by Father Yod and the Spirit of ’76 — are on a completely different page, with premeditated lyrics and almost pop arrangements of piano, acoustic guitars, and occasional group vocal harmonies. Previously unreleased track “The Great Woe” is somewhere in the middle, with verses about spiritual grief being sung over nothing more than a rolling, angry kettle drum. Ya Ho Wha is an excellent primer for the strange and sometimes unsettling sounds and feelings connected to the Source Family, representing some of the elemental sides of their conflicted but captivating musical output. ~ Fred Thomas
