Donovan, Mike

***THE PEACERS / SIC ALPS lead singer MIKE DONOVAN steps out from behind the ash-stained curtain for his second solo album in the past five years: How to Get Your Record Played In Shops. The Donovan oeuvre is not something you’re meant to think about—instead, enjoy the soupy soak, sliding beneath its opaque and filmy surface to discover the sensual world in the moat below. But if you had time to think, you might reflect that this music blooms from ’neath the gritty carpet of the USA herself, sighted psycho-acoustically via SF futures and pasts, through rose-colored lenses shoved in and now cracking at the edges, amid hoots and cries from mystery pursuers in the historical, but now-less-than-fully-existent boho jungle. Yep: four Sic Alps, two (The) Peacers and two Mike Donovan albums along the line, Mike is still jiving down on main street, a footloose man of the world, twisting the dial, running ahead of the pack and through twists and turns, past dark characters in shady doorways. Then retiring for a mellow moment around the chambers, staring above the rooftops, through the tangle of aerials and wires. And then lifting the music-box lid.... (STREET DATE - 4/20/2018)