[1] By late November 1967, The Love Exchange released a single, "Swallow the Sun" b/w "Meadow Memory" (Uptown Records 755).
[2] Written by John Merrill, "Swallow the Sun" is described as the band's "chief claim to fame" and "a nice folk-rock-psychedelic tune that's emblematic of the time with its trippily optimistic lyrics, garage-like Mamas & the Papas female-male harmonies, and swirling organ".
[6] The Love Exchange's eponymous 1968 album Love Exchange was recorded in one day at Leo de Gar Kulka's Golden State Recorders Studios at Harrison Street, San Francisco,[7] produced by Larry Goldberg of Number One Productions,[8] who "put his name on our songs",[9] and was credited with writing most of the songs,[10] with the exception of "the appropriately melancholy and ghostly 'Ballad of a Sad Man' (written by bassist Mike Joyce)".
[12] However, music critic Richie Unterberger was less charitable in his assessment of the album: "In addition to featuring "Swallow the Sun," [it] had an assortment of minor-league psych-folk-pop crossover efforts, few of them written by the band.
These were pretty shallow garage-psych-folk-rock efforts with their utopian rose-colored lyrics and organ-modal-guitar combinations, like a minor-league Peanut Butter Conspiracy (who weren't such major talents themselves).