Para Dieswärts Düül

AMG Review of Para Dieswärts Düül

Ned Raggett
All Music Guide

Surprisingly, the third Amon Düül album wasn't recorded at the jam session which produced the band's other major releases; even more surprisingly, Para Dieswärts sounded next to nothing like the other three. Out went the rough and ready drumming, stomping, and chanting; in went an extremely delicate sense of expansive songwriting, retaining the predilection for length (the shortest of the album's three songs was almost eight minutes long) but otherwise aiming at a new kind of tastefulness. This said, a completely radical reinvention this isn't; while the first track, the sidelong "Love Is Peace," has plenty of stuff none of the other albums did (intelligible lyrics in English no less, soft guitar melodies, low-key flutes, and more), that sense of simple rhythms and riffs repeated and slightly changed and altered over the course of the song predominates nonetheless. The song has a solid, sweet groove to it, becoming a singalong in the chorus almost in spite of itself; a slightly wigged-out midsection, with flange and echo, soon dissipates into acoustic fingerpicking and strumming rather than completely going nuts. "Snow Your Thirst and Open Your Mouth" approaches the other albums a bit more closely as well, in sounding like it could easily be a jam (the percussion especially sounds like a cousin to the freak-outs elsewhere), although it's far more restrained overall. "Paramechanische Welt" closes the record with a folky acoustic guitar, droning strings, and piano strum that moves along well, even without percussion until halfway through; it makes for a lovely conclusion to a surprising record.