Bobb Trimble

Sometimes when a "lost" cult artist is suddenly exhumed from the dust of pop music's past, whatever hipster mystique had been built up by the obscurity (and inflated collectors' prices) of the original records is somehow lost in the transition. Listen to most tracks on those CD compilations of all but unknown garage rock, Northern soul, and freakbeat singles and it's quickly apparent that many of these songs had never broken through in their time simply because they're not really that good. What makes Bobb Trimble special is that although the neo-psychedelic singer/songwriter has generated a tremendous level of collector mania in the quarter century since his two albums were self-released in editions of 300 copies each -- near-mint copies of 1981's Iron Curtain Innocence have changed hands for over $1,000 -- his music is actually quite good, with intrinsic merits beyond the rarity of his albums or the back-story of his somewhat troubled artistic career. As a singer, Trimble has a high, tremulous voice that's garnered comparisons to T. Rex's Marc Bolan, Sparks' Russell Mael, and even Joni Mitchell. As a songwriter, his lo-fi psychedelia is tinged with an emotional intensity not often seen in the work of better-known '80s neo-psych contemporaries like R. Stevie Moore, Robyn Hitchcock, and the Bevis Frond. Trimble's two albums may allude to the late '60s in sound and songwriting, but he's actually closer in spirit to modern-day artists like Neutral Milk Hotel, Smog, and the "freak folk" revival spearheaded by Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom. Born in the small central Massachusetts town of Marlborough in 1958, Trimble grew up listening to the usual classic rock staples, particularly the Beatles. ("Dear John, Paul, George and Ringo: If I'm a good boy and work real hard,...