The combined influences of West Coast melodic pop, The Beatles and Harry Nilsson collide head-on on this semi-concept pop psych extravaganza from the summer of 1968.
Miss Butters originally saw the light of day on RCA and survives as the one and only album from the San Francisco-based Family Tree (which included the elusive Lee Michaels for a short time, credited as Mike Olsen). It’s now reissued for the first time, remastered from the original mono masters (the stereo mix was apparently botched by an assistant engineer at the time) and comes complete with the seriously rare non-LP singles. Very much an artefact of its time and place, much has been made of the parallels between Miss Butters and Nilsson’s album of the same year, Aerial Ballet, as they share the same producer, arranger, studio, cover artist, label and even the same release date. Their catalogue numbers ran consecutively and, surprise surprise, Nilsson even co-wrote one of the songs. Make of this whatever you will, what’s beyond doubt is that this intricately-layered Beatlesesque fantasy is every inch a bona fide period curio.
