You might well think the musical heritage of the 1960s has been celebrated to exhaustion (and you would be correct), and yet, and even more astonishingly, among all the great trailblazing British bands of the period, the Pretty Things are still routinely underrated and often overlooked. With their uniquely raucous take on the R&B repertoire, the Pretties set the template for a sound later to be dubbed English Freakbeat, always pushing the proverbial envelope in an era of unprecedented pop r/evolution to psychedelia and beyond, writing and recording arguably the first and possibly the best rock opera in their masterpiece S.F. Sorrow (and what about Parachutes then?). This year sees the 60th anniversary of their debut release "Rosalyn", which seems as good an excuse as any to celebrate their legacy with a tribute EP. But instead of covering the classics, the four psych pop and mod-adjacent artists, bandmates and Gare du Nord associates assembled here have chosen to delve into the lesser known depths of the Pretty Things' catalogue: Prolific producer and multi-instrumentalist Andy Lewis does "Walking Down The Street" from the 1967 Electric Banana sessions. Parisian popmeister Popincourt takes on "You Don't Believe Me" from the Pretties' 1965 album Get the Picture. Then there's Ian Button's Papernut Cambridge braving the stop-start strangeness of cult pop sike gem "Defecting Grey" while Canterbury's own continental pop correspondent Robert Rotifer pays a visit to "House of Ten" from the frequently forgotten but generally glorious 1967 chamber pop LP Emotions. "That's a great compliment to the band", wrote the Pretties' guitarist Dick Taylor when asked for approval of the release, which made all his fans at Gare du Nord Records very happy indeed. House of Four will appear in a limited run of 300 copies as a 10" 45rpm EP (and digitally), with an added postcard featuring the dolls' house cover motif lovingly drawn by Robert Rotifer. It's an Anglo-French-Austrian cross-continental cultural endeavour in honour of a great British band that, six decades on, is STILL not a household name (except in the best of households), but always deserved to be. Just a shame Phil May's no longer around to hear it...