Sure it’s archival demos, but it also sounds like good 90s lo-fi (instead of a Tascam, recorded on a Sony 500 reel-to-reel given to the teenage artist by a family friend who purchased it in Tokyo, according to Jim Carlton's liner notes). Young Parsons offers folkie chords done right on tunes like “November Nights,” but also a fair amount of proto-Darnielleian hard strumming, and the kid clearly has talent even as he cycles through identities, from jazzy nightclub crooning to grittier R&B growls. Harvard Square was a crowded place for young men with guitars in 1965, and even if Parsons doesn’t cut a fully unique figure, he sounds convincing invoking his miner daddy on “They Still Go Down,” with its nice Gordon Lightfoot tinge, and the early original “I Just Can’t Take It Anymore” is a genuine lost gem, a folk anthem by the numbers on one level, but the numbers fit perfectly, like when a mathematician marvels at the elegance of a proof for something we already knew. Sounds like he’s got a bright future ahead of him here.
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