“Tomorrow Waits” could have been one of the better albums of 1965. “Oh I” resembles a Syd Barrett outtake with its slide guitar and acoustic strumming. Lines like “I’ve lost my saffron view/I never wanted to” (the opening cut), “It’s been unbearable/On the Bering Sea” (a driving “The Bering Sea”), and “The trees melt away” (the title song) belong with Donovan and that whole psychedelic age. However, being a few decades late doesn’t prevent “Tomorrow Waits” from being fun to listen to. In the rocker “Miami,” vocalist Michael Oakley even sings “it’s 1965” and repeats how “we can appreciate you now” as the tune closes with Pink Floydish noodling. “Drift into the Summer” and other cuts boast some nice guitar. There are even two snippets of let’s-twist-this-knob instrumentals -- "Lost in the Petrified Forest" and "The Laughing Horse" -- (barely totaling a minute though). The final title cut appropriately meanders for more than five minutes after the initial four-minute “traditional” song … far out.

Effortlessly engaging and unstrained in its classic pop-ness, the music of Silent Kids has a naturalness and authenticity that some of the Elephant Six bands with whom they have been compared can only strive for. Terms like power pop and neo-psychedelic seem, if not exactly irrelevant, rather unnecessary in the light of a music whose qualities transcend the need for any defining labels. And just beneath its flickering, slightly uneasy surface is an awareness of the transitory nature of all things.. of sadness and loss.