Back during the acid wave and its musical fallout, it was practically a rite of passage for college kids to put a band together, practice for a few years, release an album of mildly familiar songs after graduation, and basically fade into normalcy. Though this New York quintet maintained a much more active touring schedule than the typical Mom’s-car-driving garage band of the day, their 1970 debut reeks of this well-established phenomenon. The powerful voice of lead singer Sandy Crespo is the one thing that sets their sound apart from the average TV show score of the day (which was a hell of a lot funkier than today’s Payola OC shit, so that’s not really a diss). Whatever chemistry they had developed into some decent ideas, as heavily influenced as they may have been.
The opening title track draws easy comparisons to the motif of Nirvana’s 1968 opus All Of Us, and basically acts as the album’s theme, while its follow-up, “Come Along,” evokes a more clearheaded, laid-back Jefferson Airplane. The rolling bassline and structure from album highlight “Better Than You (Mental Song)” comes across like Love with Big Brother & The Holding Company-style psych-pop changes. And you’ve gotta hand it to their cover of Fontella Bass’ immortal “Rescue Me,” which does everything a good cross-genre homage should, giving the source material a new context without forsaking the spirit of the original. Though it ain’t exactly Cream, Disciple’s lone contribution to the West Coast psychedelic canon is a fairly well-executed exposition of all the many blessings they had going for them, but I think some of their grounding ideas were lost behind inadequate recording and production. One can only imagine how vivid, dynamic, and surreal this album could have been with someone like George Martin or Paul Rothchild piecing their sound together. As is, Come & See Us As We Are exists as a footnote of interest on the continually expanding musical timeline.
