The Third Mind: The Third Mind

The old stoner adage “If you remember the 60s, you really weren’t there” applies only in part to The Third Mind, the fully improvised eponymous album by the ad hoc band of Dave Alvin (guitar, vocals), Victor Krummenacher (bass, vocals), David Immergluck (guitar, keyboards, vocals), Michael Jerome (drums, percussion), with guest Jesse Sykes (guitar, vocals). The 64-year-old Alvin (The Blasters, X, et al.) and the 58-year-old Immergluck (Counting Crows, Camper Van Beethoven, Cracker) are the only verified boomers in this group, but Krummenacher (Camper, Monks of Doom, Cracker), Jerome (Richard Thompson), and Sykes are equally steeped in the psychedelic rock, folk, and blues aesthetic of the decade (1961–1970) that inspired these kaleidoscopic live-in-the-studio performances. One Spaghetti Western-ish original, “Claudia Cardinale,” fits seamlessly with the guitar-driven covers of Alice Coltrane’s “Journey in Satchindananda,” Fred Neil’s “The Dolphins,” Bonnie Dobson’s post-apocalyptic “Morning Dew,” Roky Erikson and the 13th Floor Elevators’ cockeyed “Reverberation,” and the Paul Butterfield Band’s epic “East West,” which does the late Mike Bloomfield proud and gets two remixes on the LP and early CD releases. If you weren’t there then, you can be now.