Cosmic Truth

The Undisputed Truth’s early ’70s track record as Norman Whitfield’s go-to psychedelic-soul test bed creatively carried them far past the early success of “Smiling Faces Sometimes” — even if the charts didn’t do much to help them afterwards. By the mid ’70s, personnel changes and Whitfield’s muse had mutated them into an increasingly out-there ensemble that occasionally approached P-Funk levels of rarefied Afrofuturism, with a two-fer of ’75 LPs (Cosmic Truth and Higher Than High) that made for a wild conclusion to both the band’s and Whitfield’s Motown tenure. Both albums are choice, but Cosmic Truth‘s the more provocative and freewheeling one — a spin on the Big Bad Wolf as class-needling, hood-rooted wiseass in “Lil’ Red Riding Hood,” the blatant-but-effective Bootsyisms of paranormal acid-boogie “UFO,” and a Buddy Miles-besting soul-mode cover of Neil Young’s “Down By the River” see to that. Member turnover left Joe “Pep” Harris as the only non-Whitfield constant from the group’s early days, but the Undisputed Truth’s rep as the Temptations’ mirror-universe version (complete with bizarro-version yet engaging takes on a slinkier “1990” and a swing-beat “(I Know) I’m Losing You”) actually makes their strangeness that much more evident — especially when Norman cranks up the guitars, making this one of the hardest-rocking R&B albums on any label that decade, much less Gordy/Tamla/Motown itself.