Black Beauty

Black Beauty is an album by the psychedelic rock band Love, released on February 13, 2012. Issued on High Moon Records, it compiles material from a cancelled studio album, which frontman Arthur Lee-backed by a new group with an all-black line-up-planned to have released on the Buffalo Records label. Recorded after a series of unsuccessful albums, both with Love and his 1972 solo effort Vindicator, Black Beauty was intended to serve as Lee's comeback album. Among other Love releases, it is notable for it's reinvention of the band as a funk group, while preserving Lee's lyrical complexity. Released nearly six years after the death of Lee, Black Beauty did not represent the pinnacle of Lee's musical creativity but is seen as an appropriate closing chapter on his and Love's recording career. Some of the tracks for the cancelled album had appeared beforehand on compilation albums such as Reel to Real and Love Lost. However, Black Beauty is the first release to assemble all the compositions from the 1973 recording sessions. While the album does not represent the classic Love line-up, music critics have recognized it as the best representation of Lee's hard rock period.