(Credits: Far Out / Light In The Attic)

THE SKINNY: 50 years ago, Jeff Bridges was in the midst of making a new incarnation of King Kong. Clearly, large apes, chaos in New York, and the will to let life be lived was firm in his thinking. This album, prised from a decaying tape that captured his jam sessions with his childhood friends, LA oddballs and pretty much anyone else who happened to be wandering by carrying a tune, is full of those things.

Oversized animals hanging from buildings might not dominate the mix, but Bridges’ character in Kong was a hippie with his heart in the right place, determined to let the beast live. That sort of captures the sentiment of the music here. It’s so casual and free that you can’t help but picture a man on the brink of being out of his depth, desperately channelling music’s liberation. There’s so much groove and gratefulness that it’s hard not to be moved.

The record fell by the wayside after 1978 thanks to the same free-spiritedness that now stands out as its triumph. Although the skill of the jazzy soft rock music is apparent, there’s an equal sense that it’s just old friends having fun, and one of them just so happens to be so emotive he’s won an Oscar for it. Sure, you can sense there are moments where they’ve clearly said, ‘Let’s do this one like Randy Newman’ now, and moments where they’ve also said, ‘Let’s just fart around and get drunk’, but that’s all part of the charm of this vaguely maddening smorgasbord of lo-fi delights.

Skillfully, the humble songs have been restored without being interfered with. So, the album remains an unpolished time capsule—welcoming you into a get-together with Jeff in the late 1970s, where you find a man of supreme talent and charisma, brimming with ideas about monkeys, William Burroughs-like prose, an odd fascination with the Hindenburg disaster, and his very own Wreckin’ Crew ready to groove to the sound of downtown LA.

For fans of: White Russians, Leon Russell, and not the fucking Eagles, man.

A concluding comment from The Dude: “Far out, man. That’s far out.”

Slow Magic, 1977-1978 track by track:

Release date: April 11th | Producer: Various | Label: Light in the Attic

‘He’s Here’: An interlude that takes you back to a 1970s party quicker than a shagpile carpet.

‘Obnoxious’: Nobody has ever even so much food or so many quaaludes. The mildly drunken soft rock and soul hybrid has a beautiful rhythm and equally appealing irreverence. Shame about the obnoxious end. [4/5]

‘Attitude’: The best song that Randy Newman never wrote. But if you’re going to rip off anyone, you may as well make it Randy. [4/5]

‘Space 1’: The ever-wavering album ventures towards a spacey ambience. It’s deeply experimental and only vaguely nonsensical. [3/5]

‘Slow Magic’: The line “like tulips kissing” is indicative of the subtle magic and beauty of this barnstorming album. Once again, it’s a lot of Newman, but it’s done so charmingly with wailing, OTT brass, you can never begrudge this mildly manic spring stroll. [4.5/5]

‘Here On This Island’: A slight ska undertone takes you towards the heart of Saturday night on the outskirts of some disco city before things get funky with spoken word, thanks to Burgess Meredith. [4/5]

‘Light Blues’: While the mix sounds incomplete and unpolished, yet again, charm makes up for all the issues that audiophiles will needlessly lament. Just have a bloody boogie-woogie time with it, dude. [3.5/5]

‘This Is The One’: A grand ballad in the style of Harry Nilsson. Bridges sings of dawn and all the many possibilities for things to go wrong with admirable enthusiasm. [4/5]

‘Space 2’: A crazed and manic jam that may well be an outtake. Potentially too crazed and manic for the sane, but for everyone else, a jam does break out eventually—one that Frank Zappa, at his most dishevelled, would be proud of. [3/5]

‘You Could Be Ready’: Slap on your RayBans and go for a drive to pick up some beers on a Friday night and listen to this. It somehow captures nostalgia and weekend reverie, but simply saying, “You could be ready”. [4/5]

‘Kong’: Meredith returns for the eight-minute finale. It captures the rough around the edges charm of this odd little album. But that’s just my opinion, man. [4/5]