Ultimately, one's enjoyment of the album will turn on one's appreciation of ELP, though "Thoughts" and "Eugene" make a solid bid for top-tier psychedelic status even for non-prog-fans. Elsewhere, Emerson is less successful keeping his extravagance in check, songs like "Rondo" and "War And Peace" feeling like dry runs for the ELP bombast. Opener "Flower King of Flies" and "Tantalising Maggie" also capture the musical experimentation of the era, a bit dated yet fine.
Equally great is album closer "The Cry of Eugene," a nice slice of blissed-out psychedelia, melodic and trippy, one of the better examples of circa-67/68 sonic creativity. The title track is an absolutely killer single, with a big, boomy, anthemic chorus that really elevates the song (whose verses are a bit meh) into the stratosphere.
Yes, Emerson's keyboard bombast is already threatening to edge out the rest of the music, but for the most part the album avoids some of ELP's excesses (which isn't to say it avoids the excesses of late 60s psychedelia, but at least those had a certain lysergic charm). While largely viewed as a brief weigh station for Keith Emerson before putting together ELP, The Nice were actually pretty decent, and their debut with the funny title (cribbed from the band members' last names) is a surprisingly entertaining psychedelic, pre-progressive rock trifle. Digging back into my stash of 60s UK psyche again.
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