Released to widespread indifference back in January 1970, Manchester band Pacific Drift’s album Feelin’ Free surely deserved a better fate. A sparkling, West Coast-influenced amalgam of post-psychedelic pop and early progressive rock, skilfully weaving wistful hippie laments and riff-laden rockers into a fully cohesive whole, it didn’t really attract any kind of attention until the Great Prog Rock Stampede of the late Eighties, when albums that couldn’t be given away when first released suddenly began to change hands for significant sums of money. This first-ever authorised reissue of what has become a highly sought-after album adds three tracks from the variant US release as well as the band’s version of the Spirit song ‘Water Woman’, only released at the time as a UK single. With rare photos, new band quotes and master-tape sound quality, this long-overdue release is unquestionably the definitive Pacific Drift anthology. Though their sole album wouldn’t emerge until the dawn of the Seventies, Pacific Drift had been around for some while by that point. A product of the highly incestuous Manchester group scene of the mid-to-late Sixties, they had first come together in 1967 as the Sponge - essentially an updated, psychedelic-era version of the Tony Merrick Scene, with singer Merrick and guitarist Graham Harrop involved alongside other musicians, including an Asian drummer. But there were several early personnel changes, culminating with Merrick leaving in early 1968 to for