Caroline Peyton - Mock Up

Midwest Coast charms

You’re definitely a bit weird when even Elektra, home to some of the 60s’ more taxing signings, won’t put up with you. For one reason or another, Bloomington, Indiana-born Mark Bingham didn’t last long as an in-house songwriter there before being kicked out and heading back home. Luckily for him, his native state had recently become home to an artist-friendly farmers’ commune where Bingham could hunker down to write an early 70s antitdote to the West Coast luminaries’ navel-gazing.

Released towards the end of 1972, Mock Up has all the jazzy touchstones of Joni Mitchell, courtesy of one-time Sonny Rollins pianist Mark Gray’s powerhouse versatility. Thanks to Bingham, however, there’s little of the confessional singer-songwriter tropes, more songs about “a cat eating tuna from the inside out”. Meanwhile, Caroline Peyton’s vocal range adds a new style to each album’s cut; unsurprising, since she would later find fame singing for major Disney productions such as Aladdin. Keeping up with Zappa timechanges, gamely making her way through Bingham’s pay-off line to Pull (“I pull it right out of my pants”) and howling like a drugged coyote on the closing track, Mock Up is a period curio for sure, though not the slapdash mess its title implies.

Asterisk/Numero Group | *43006-2

Reviewed by Jason Draper
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