When 60s Pop Collides With a Vague Sense of Horror

Any time I've read about the classic Seeds song "Pushin' Too Hard" it's always been in reference to the supposed ineptitude and rawness of the track, and its nature as an example of all that's good and bad about 60s punk. While this is undoubtedly important, I always wondered why no one picked up on its sinister mood - it's always carried an eerie mood for me, from the backing vocals to the creepy electric piano solo, placing it alongside Doors tracks like "End of the Night" or "Not to Touch the Earth" in my dark psychedelic top 10. Thank God for allmusic.com then, because reading Richie Unterberger's review proved that others have garnered a similar feeling.

Choice analysis includes: "the two chords that are alternated between throughout the song, for one thing, are pretty odd: dark and minor, yet nigglingly creepy. The combination of thundering stiff hyper-fast drums, fuzzy guitar, and electric piano creates a foggy...stormy atmosphere" and "crucial to the musical appeal of this recipe are the ethereal, nerve-jangling high harmonies at the end of each verse, as the other Seeds mournfully drone "too hard." So there you have it, a small critical consensus! The appeal of much of the Nuggets continuem isn't in the bands' apparent ineptitude itself, but in the very strangeness spawned from their attempts at emulating more professional pop music.