When some ‘70s reggae stuff pops up and it ends up having a singer that doesn’t sound British or Jamaican, it’s probably from Toronto – not always, but it’d be a good guess to make. Not being familiar with the Soul Explosion Band, I was actually drawn to its cover when the album was posted over at Satta Massagana – take a look around over there, it’ll be worth your time. The art that adorns the cover of Too Much Confusion is a hap dash collage of darkly ominous images, including a slave ship and what looks kinda looks like the Eifel Tower, but probably isn’t. On second thought, it resembles the cover of that first Bad Brains disc with a lightning bolt striking the capitol. Either way, I copped it. The folder sat around for a few days before I got to it – the disc got posted earlier this month.

I tossed a few tracks on in addition to a smattering of whatever else was sitting my hard drive and hit shuffle. A few songs come up as I was industriously taking care of something else and I thought to myself it wasn’t too bad. I was also under the impression that it was a woman singing. I was incorrect. In fact, it’s just a guy high a pretty high voice – not false setto ala Junior Murvin, but high none the less.

Owen Blackgrove leads the Soul Explosion Band here over mostly slower roots tracks. There aren’t any derivations and only a few times do any hints of the discs recording date crop up. The synthesizer on “Baby” leaves a bit to be desired, but it also has a Peter Tosh styled guitar solo and some soulful electric keyboard to make up for the inclusion of the ill conceived instrument. The hook sounds familiar, but I can’t place it despite revisiting the song a few times. The synth shows up a few tracks later as well, but neither of these instances are all too burdensome.

In contrast to some of the other stuff from Toronto that was recorded about the same time – a few Jackie Mittoo discs, some Willi Williams, the dubby Chalawa discs and the like – this is pretty average. It does come off sounding closer to JA sounds to the ear than that Chalawa disc, but that’s not saying much. It seems that the transplanted performers came off better there than the home grown talent, but that’s not too surprising.

The title track is the one redemptive offering here – nothing’s too bad, but “Too Much Confusion” is actually pleasing to throw on. As opposed to the rest of the album, the track’s given over to production with Blackgrove’s vocal being sliced in and removed sporadically throughout the track. It’s not heavy handed, but considering the rest of the album is made up of some pop fair, it’s memorable just for that.

This is apparently the group’s second disc, with their first recording, Out Of Many One People, preceding this 1979 album by just a year. I won’t encourage you to hunt it down, but it’s a piece of the JA diaspora. And for that, the Soul Explosion Band is interesting even if it’s just a footnote.