Kites

THERE WAS a Spencer Davis in the Spencer Davis Group, a Manfred Mann in Manfred Mann, and even a Dave Dee in Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich. But the first thing to realise about Simon Dupree & The Big Sound is that there was no Simon Dupree.

The second is that the Big Sound were never even particularly Big. In fact, like the Bee Gees, they were essentially three brothers: Derek, Phil and Ray Shulman. Which is a lot of brothers, but not as many as there were in the Jackson Five or the Osmonds, so that's not exactly one for the Guinness Book of Records either. And worse, over the precipice of the Sixties into the 'Progressive Seventies', the Big Sound de-evolved into the unforgivably self-indulgent Old Grey Whistle Test stalwarts Gentle Giant . . .

So why the hell should this shiny new CD package be worth your careful hoarded pennies?

Well, there's few art pretensions here. This is essentially the Big Sound's one and only album Without Reservations, inflated from its original twelve tracks to twenty by the addition of their one-and-a-half chart singles - 'Kites' (no.9 in November 1967) and 'For Whom The Bell Tolls' (no.43 the following April), plus 'B'-sides and early Blue-Eyed Scooter Soul singles like their non-hit 'I See The Light'. It's all here. The complete blueprint pop career from the Mod R&B covers - Homer Banks' 'Sixty Minutes Of Your Love' and Ben E. King's 'What Is Soul' done like a Zoot Money or a Chris Farlowe might have done them, the perfect sweaty Club jive for every self-appointed In-Crowd at every mid-Sixties Art School Dance - to the mild psychedelia that then gave them their brief burst of Top Of The Pops success.

The title-track here is quite gently magnificent. Written by Lee Pockriss and Hal Hackady - the team responsible for Teen-trash like 'Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini' and Bobby Vee's 'Rubber Ball' - it's a track that floats a charming calligraphy of images on spiralling thermals of Japanese breeze - "I will float a silken silver moon near your window/I will scatter rice-paper stars in your heaven/All of these and seven wonders more will I fly/when the wind is high" - with bit-part actress Jackie Chan breathing oriental eroticism all over the instrumental break in a poetic Japanese voice-over that still packs more sensual charm than Sharon Stone's entire movie-ography. 'For Whom The Bell Tolls' follows, drifting in on sound-bites of twittering birds and doomy church-bells, before fandangoing into a perfect pop of acoustic flamenco bursts and trumpet fanfares.

Trivia buffs know already that beyond the confines of this album the group also recorded the highly collectible 'I Am A Mole And I Live In A Hole' under the Beatlesesque guise of the Moles, and that after the demise of Gentle Giant, Derek Shulman became the U.S.-based A&R executive who first signed Bon Jovi, while Ray Shulman went on to do production knob-twiddling for the likes of Sugarcubes and A.R. Kane.

But in their time Simon Dupree could occasionally be a class act, and the Big Sound - just once or twice - were able to live up to the boastful promise of their name.

• Andrew Darlington