ou can’t help but get a kick out of the catch-phrase nature of our of society, the one that evolved from aphoristic Franklin musings like “Fish and visitors stink after three days” to bumper-sticker lifestyle mantras of the “Abortion stops a beating heart” variety. (Today’s great find was a “Darth W. Bush” sticker, all black.) A perennially favorite Baltimore line is “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes” (“hon” can be inserted for colloquial accuracy). As if, apparently, the winds will change to suit your whimsy. But alas, Lone Pigeon has presented the listening public with a practical application for that intuitional nonsense in the form of Concubine Rice, a gorgeous, fragmented aural buffet for the ADD society.


Lone Pigeon is better known to the normals as Gordon Anderson, late of the Beta Band and co-conspirator on several earlier, more organic Beta tracks like the quintiessential “Dry the Rain” (whose chorus is hypnotically re-imagined here) and “Dog’s Got a Bone.” After falling ill and leaving the Betas, Anderson seemingly cured himself with handfuls of shrooms and repeated listening of “Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” as the seeds of John Lennon’s playful delusions are all over Concubine Rice. It’s even furnished with genuine Lennon bombs, songs that would give Paul McCartney’s saccharine body seizures. How else to explain a late-70s arena dud like “Boats” or something as silly as “The Ancient Cow of Bubbletoop,” a Muppets-on-helium narrative train wreck?


On a conventional album, you see, “Bubbletoop” might seem completely out of place and disruptive to an album’s flow. On Concubine Rice, though, which is best described as a series of song snippets that approximate a whole, the album‘s flow exists solely in its lack of flow. Most tracks proper (there are 12 listed) actually contain several songs that are wildly unrelated in both structure and content. And so when the 45-second “Bubbletoop” gives way to the Scottish prerequisite spoken word, bass and synth-heavy “Beatmix Chocbar Wrap,” it makes sense, if only because these two bits don’t sound much like the rest (there are 24 named). Hence, if the first minute of a track is subpar, stick it out for a bit.


And somehow it works, and works well, because even if the majority of the remaining songs display a more pop-centered insanity, they are still, by design and to the ears, wildly bizarre...but in a friendly pop way, because like his Beta mates (and, obviously, Lennon), Andersen has a superb gift for melody that can make a lazy lyric like “I woke up in the morning I was feeling all right/I left my hat by the bedroom took a look outside” (from “The Road Up To Harlow Square”) seem positively senior-quote worthy. And for the most part, the off-kilter feel of the lyrics completely offset the simple pop arrangements, which are beautifully on display in “Sally Bradwall,” “Old Mr. Muncherman,” and “Oh, Catherine,” all of which would fit easily onto Magical Mystery Tour, but feel as haphazardly fresh as some Anthology castaways.


You can be sure that when Yoko Ono takes over the world, as is prophesized in the scriptures according to David Fricke, she’ll secure every possible copy of Concubine Rice, lest someone mistake it for the work of her late husband, which would be more than feasible. That’d be a tyrannical mistake though, for, like a spotty genius like Lennon, Concubine Rice highlights the Lone Pigeon’s strengths rather than his slight missteps, which only make the epidemic beauty of his hits more sloppily delicious. And in the end, it’s entirely worth waiting for.