80. Buffalo Springfield - Buffalo Springfield Again (October 1967)

1. Mr. Soul

2. A Child's Claim to Fame

3. Everydays*

4. Expecting to Fly*

5. Bluebird

6. Hung Upside Down

7. Sad Memory*

8. Good Time Boy

9. Rock & Roll Woman

10. Broken Arrow

A-

So before I listened to this album, all I knew about Buffalo Springfield was that they sang "For What It's Worth", and that Neil Young was involved somehow. So this was a pleasant surprise. I don't think it's as great an album as some people have made it out to be, and it doesn't contain anything to rival "For What It's Worth", but it's a pleasant enough listen with a few great tracks scattered through it.

The usual late 60s nonsense is of course present. There are lots of Byrds-derived fuzz guitars playing skronky, scribbly solos. The lyrics are frequently mystifying and more than a little pretentious. And of course many of the songs feature multiple time changes and different sections (most evidently on Young's "Broken Arrow", which attempts to capture the whole range of human emotion through multiple sections bridged by sound collages, but mostly just comes-off as melancholy and somewhat confusing).

Things open with "Mr. Soul", driven by a warped rendering of the riff from the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction". It's a good song, musically, but it also features Neil Young's worst traits as a song writer - self-righteous anger and pretentious, baffling lyrics. I think it's about the trappings of fame, or how people perceive you, or something. I don't know. Anyway, after that is the pleasant country rock song "A Child's Claim to Fame", which could easily be by the Eagles. Then there's "Everydays", a gorgeous, mellow, bass-driven jazz rock number about... something? Alienation? The way days blur into each other? What the hell does "Soft within the wayward things /Of ecstasy, the sound of trees /Most any breeze, what a baby sees" mean? I guess I'm missing the point - it's supposed to convey emotion, and a rush of images. Anyway, it's a lovely song.

"Expecting to Fly", another Young composition, is probably the best song on the album. It's a lovely acoustic ballad featuring lush, complex string arrangements. It's also clearly about something - saying goodbye to your lover when a relationship ends, as they set-off expecting bigger and better things. It's very pretty, and points the way towards the lush soft-rock that Young would dally with in the early 70s.

After that, "Bluebird" and "Hung Upside Down" are nice enough rock songs. "Bluebird" shifts through several different styles, from the Byrds to sounding like something by Love ("A House Is Not  a Motel"?) before closing with a pretty bit of bluegrass. I don't much care for "Hung Upside Down", though. It has a somewhat harsher flavour that's out of place on what is a pretty mellow album.

"Sad Memory", I really like. It completely lacks the ambition and complexity that threatens to sink this album, instead being a gentle acoustic ballad with minimal accompaniment and direct lyrics, carried almost entirely by Richie Furay's lovely voice. Some might dismiss it as a bit simple, or not up to the standards of the rest of the album, but I found that when listening to ...Again through several times it provided a welcome reprieve and a pleasant counterpoint from all the "progressive" nonesense. The next song, "Good Time Boy", is also a Furay composition, and it's a fun (if inconsequential) soul stomper sung by the band's drummer, and featuring a dynamite horn section. Purists might complain that it doesn't really have a place on this album, but I think ...Again is defined by its eclecticism. 

The last two songs are "Rock & Roll Woman" and "Broken Arrow". The first is a very pretty rock song about, well, a rock & roll woman. It's the usual mix of drippy metaphors and lines about looking into people's eyes, but it's pretty. "Broken Arrow", as already stated, is probably the most ambitious song on the album - and I guess it mostly succeeds. I've just never been one for multi-part mini epics, and at the time I don't think Young had matured enough as a songwriter to successfully tackle the different issues he was addressing - basically, a few brief snapshots of a band, a young boy, and a royal wedding, which all seem to be trying to say something but I'm still not sure what. 

I think the main problem I had with this album is the lyrics. They sound great when they're being sung, and I guess if you're the kind of person who likes to pore over lyrics sheets searching for hidden meaning, or who just enjoys a pretty bit of imagery, you'll quite like them. But I personally think that Buffalo Springfield was composed of some very talented musicians who couldn't quite match their lyrical ambition to their talent. Of course this was early days for all the members, and it's possible they'd go on to bigger and better things (I will tell you when I get round to their later albums). Of course, Neil Young would soon mature into one of the finest singer-songwriters of all time, so I guess I can cut him some slack here. 

Probably, though, I am missing the point. The strength of this album lies in its brilliance as music, and it was obviously massively influential in that respect. There were hints of this sort of music earlier in the List, but this album really seems to be stretching the possibilities of rock music. Although it wasn't released till October of 67 (why the Book doesn't list these albums chronologically is beyond me) and so possibly I will discover, as I have before, that what sounds revolutionary was actually ripping-off something that came out in February of the same year.

It probably also doesn't help that I no longer smoke cannabis. Trying to adequately appreciate a lot of this music while straight is going to be a recurring problem, I can see.

 

79. Country Joe and the Fish - Electric Music for the Mind and Body (May 1967)

1. Flying High

2. Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine*

3. Death Sound Blues 

4. Happiness Is a Porpoise Mouth*

5. Section 43*

6. Superbird

7. Sad and Lonely Times

8. Love

9. Bass Strings

10. The Masked Marauder

11. Grace

B+

The extent to which you enjoy this album really depends on your fondness for loose, organ-led, vaguely bluesy jams. The first half of the album is mostly more conventional songs, but by the time we get to "Section 43" things are firmly in "hippie jam band" territory. Which, if I'm being honest, I don't hate. I don't especially care for it, either. 

Things kick off with "Flying High", a loose number full of wandering guitars and nice bits of distortion, which is about a hitchhiker being picked up by a couple of guys and being dropped off at the airport with the fare back home. It's also, get this, about drugs! I know - crazy, right? Did you realise the words "high" and "trip" can have multiple meanings? This is the sort of thing we are dealing with on this album - Country Joe and the Fish are not subtle about their advocacy of what might generously be termed "alternative lifestyles". "Superbird", about LBJ, ends with a threat to make the President eat flowers and drop acid. "Bass Strings" ends with Country Joe whispering the word "LSD" over and over again. Thankfully, this is an early example of psychedelia, and the genre hadn't quite disappeared up its own arse yet. So, these songs have an immediacy and coherence that a lot of later releases lack. A song like "Sad and Lonely Times" even has a nice sort of early Belle & Sebastien feel. "Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine" is an intelligent, though faintly obnoxious, Dylanesque number about a woman on the fringes of the scene who buries her nose in books to attain knowledge, worships death, and "never learned country ways" - both a clever song, and annoying example of hippies placing primacy on experience. And really, I've never understood that - these people will mock you for reading something in a book, but believe every word of a conversation with a stranger! Don't they realise books are written by strangers? I don't know.

Anyway the last "song" song of note is "Happiness is a Porpoise Mouth", which is a pleasant bit of surreal poetry and shows the group's folk roots. The rest of the album is comprised of lengthy jams of varying degrees of success. The best is "Section 43", probably because it comes first and you aren't sick of the approach yet. The worst is probably "Grace", which is a formless paean to Grace Slick. "Bass Strings" is a pretty, mournful number that captures the hippie zeitgeist perfectly, but goes on far too long and features the ridiculous "LSD, LSD" coda, which must have seemed pretty wild at the time but which dates this album terribly. "The Masked Marauder" is the most organ-led, and most conventionally "psych jammy" piece. It's OK I guess.

Anyway, this is a fine album musically, but the lyrics are sort of all over the place, and if you dislike lengthy songs complete with section changes, or find hippies insufferable, then it may not be for you. It's annoying, because across the first half I really enjoyed this album, but it suffers from the usual fault of side two of the LP being mostly filler. But then, your mileage may vary - to people of a certain bent, the second half might be where the rich rewards are.

I don't know. I guess I forgot when I started this project that I was going to have to wade through a lot of hippie bullshit. It's annoying, because I enjoy the music on this album quite a bit, but the lyrical excesses are kind of absurd. Also, "Grace" and "Superbird" are just annoying.

I think the best way I can sum up this album is by saying that I enjoyed listening to it, but I cannot summon a single shit to give about it.

78. The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (May 1967)

1. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

2. With a Little Help from My Friends*

3. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

4. Getting Better

5. Fixing a Hole

6. She's Leaving Home*

7. Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!

8. Within You Without You

9. When I'm Sixty-Four

10. Lovely Rita

11. Good Morning Good Morning

12. Sgt. pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)

13. A Day in the Life*

A+

So we come to Sgt. Pepper's, the most albumy album that ever albumed. This is generally regarded as the moment when rock and pop came to be considered high art - with all the good and bad that would entail. I mean, this is a great album, but it would lead directly to such sonic nightmares as Tarkus and Tales from Topographic Oceans. Suddenly, rock music could be considered as relevant and sophisticated as jazz and classical music. I like some of the music that came in the wake of this, but if I'm being honest I prefer stuff that's rawer, harder and more immediate. But anyway, this is the Beatles, and you're in pretty good hands. I'd never stoop to writing a hagiography of them, but I won't pretend they weren't an amazing and influential band.

This is a concept album, but it's a concept of more benefit to the band than the listeners. The idea is that this is a concert put on by Sergeant Peppers et al. The Beatles found this freeing, as it let them explore musical directions without feeling limited by their history. For the listener, it just means you have to suffer through the largely pointless title track, its reprise, and the ridiculous (although technically impressive) "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite!". And then the band's performance ends and they just sort of shove "A Day in the Life" in there. Which, admittedly, might be the Beatles' "best" song, whatever that means, but it does kind of undercut the whole concept.

Still, let's focus on the positive. "With a Little Help from My Friends" is a glorious song, catchy and poignant. I never much cared for "Lucy in the Sky" - it has a wonderfully trippy verse, but the chorus is generic and godawful; I suppose it works as a release of tension, but honestly it damages the song in my opinion. "Getting Better", on the other hand, is magnificent, with its classic refrain of "you've got to admit it's getting better (it can't get no worse!)", and candid admissions about how terrible Lennon had been in the past, and how he was trying to do better (although that wouldn't stop him from being a controlling dick to Yoko). Then of course you have "Fixing a Hole", which is nice enough if you like strained metaphors and unremarkable melodies. But then things are back on form with the astonishing "She's Leaving Home", a beautiful and touching song about the lack of understanding between the generations, in which a couple can't understand why their daughter would want to leave despite their having given her the best of their lives - it really is the ultimate "parents just don't understand" song, about how even with the best of intentions a couple can suffocate their children.

Side two opens with "Within You, Without You", one of George Harrison's Indian songs and one of his finest moments as a Beatle. The combination of Indian instruments with lush Western strings, and Harrison's lovely lyrics about self-knowledge and the nature of reality (all drawn from his fascination with Indian philosophy, which I share to a lesser degree), are a complete departure from the rock style of the rest of the album, and help to reinforce his position as the thinking man's Beatle. Of course, it's followed by one of the best and one of the worst McCartney compositions. "When I'm Sixty-Four" is one of McCartney's finest moments as a songwriter - a gentle ballad about the inevitability of growing older and doing it for the long haul. (They taught us to sing it in music class in school! Although they also taught us "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" - the 90s were a different time). "Lovely Rita", unfortunately, is a proggy blowout that buries a decent little pop song under layers of instrumental wankery. And then there's "Good Morning Good Morning", easily the least memorable song on the album.

The real show stopper, of course, is "A Day in the Life". It suffers a little from the Beatles' insistence on writing like they were far-seeing visionaries when they were really just bright guys with a gift for sounds, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a dark, strange, poetic song that shifts from gentle pianos to the sound of an orchestra melting, even as it attempts to capture the experiences of an ordinary man trying to live a day in this bizarre world we inhabit. It's pretty impressive - a sort of "I Am the Walrus" for people who expect their songs to actually mean something.

So possibly I am not doing this album justice. I was not high when I listened to it. But then the great thing about the Beatles is that, while informed by drugs, they consistently made music that sober people might want to listen to (I have only had two glasses of wine - and leave me alone, it's my day off). Andf this album is probably most important for its role in opening up the shear possibilities of music - a world where rock, pop, jazz, and art music could coexist and feed off each other. ButI'm not even going to bother trying to examine the cultural impact of this album. What matters, these days, is how it stands up as music. And really, aside from an unfortunate trio of songs in the back half, it's pretty perfect.

77. Nico - Chelsea Girls (October 1967)

1. The Fairest of the Seasons*

2. These Days*

3. Little Sister

4. Winter Song

5. It Was a Pleasure Then*

6. Chelsea Girls

7. I'll Keep It with Mine

8. Somewhere There's a Feather

9. Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams

10. Eulogy to Lenny Bruce

A-

Listening to this album brought back a lot of memories of my university days, when I used to listen to a lot of Nico and the Velvet Underground and so forth. It's nice to come back to this music, especially now that I'm older and a little worldlier.

Chelsea Girls is a strange album. The majority of songs are delicate pieces of chamber pop and folk music, broken up by strange excursions like the astonishing "It Was a Pleasure Then" and the nightmarish title track. Unlike Nico's later efforts, none of the songs are written by her. This is kind of interesting, as it means that the songwriters (all male) are effectively applying Nico's voice to their own songs. And it really is an extraordinary voice. Low, yet note-perfect, and with a thick German accent, it really has to be heard for itself. What's surprising about Chelsea Girls is that, unlike with the dark, austerely beautiful music of Nico's proper solo albums like the Marble Index and Desertshore, there are songs here where she's capable of genuine warmth. I'm not entirely sure what "The Fairest of the Seasons" is about, but it's a beautiful and effecting piece of folk pop. And "These Days", Nico's most famous song, is a reflection on growing older, giving up, and retreating from the world - but the music is so pretty, and Nico's voice hits such a note of optimistic warmth, that it becomes a celebration of self-imposed loneliness rather than a lament.

The real outliers on this album are "Winter Song", "It Was a Pleasure Then", and the title track. The first, featuring deeply cryptic lyrics, sounds like some sort of mediaeval ballad and is quite dark and strange. "It Was a Pleasure Then", on the other hand, sounds like it could be a VU song - it's a lengthy, noisy, ragaish drone in which Lou Reed and John Cale play warped vamps and riffs on guitar and viola while Nico coos wordlessly at the top of her range. It's a beautiful song which, if not for the crystal clear production, could easily have closed-out the first Velvet Underground album. And then there's "Chelsea Girls", written by Lou Reed, which presents a tragic view of Warhol's Factory scene and the freaks and drug addicts that populated it, and which is anchored by a very cool bass motif.

Nico would effectively disown this album. Anyone familiar with her later work can see that it's light years removed from it. And apparently she wanted a rockier album, with drums and electric guitars. Instead, producer Tom Wilson layered the tracks with strings (which work quite well, often playing rhythmically to compensate for the lack of drums and bass) and jazz flute (which is honestly a bit much). But whether or not Nico was dissatisfied with her lack of creative input, or the way the album turned out, it can't detract from what is a real gem of a listen - an album that manages to bridge the divide between gentle folk rock and the world of drugged-out noise experimentations going on in Nico's other band.

76. Astrud Gilberto - Beach Samba (? 1967)

1. Stay*

2. Misty Roses*

3. The Face I Love

4. A Banda (Parade)

5. Oba, Oba

6. Canoeiro

7. I Had the Craziest Dream

8. Bossa Na Praia (Beach Samba) *

9. My Foolish Heart

10. Dia das Rosas (I Think of You)

11. You Didn't Have to Be So Nice

12. Nao Bate O Coracao

B-

Well this is an album of pretty, inconsequential music. And really, there's a place for pretty and inconsequential music in the world. In fact, it's easy to forget that it was albums like Beach Samba that were selling in the 60s. Everyone likes to think of the Beatles and the Stones and so forth, but it's easy to forget that was youth music, and a lot of the recording buying public were old fogies who just wanted some light pop to have a few drinks to while they slow danced in the lounge room. You only have to paw through crates of old records at charity shops to know it's true.

That said, I'm not entirely sure why this album was included. It's a pleasant enough listen, but it's not even the best Astrud Gilberto album (I know, because I listened to a couple of other ones out of curiosity). There are a few memorable tunes ("Stay" is very pretty, and I liked "Misty Roses"), but mostly this album is just pleasant cocktail music. Though of course, there is a strange song which consists of a duet between Gilberto and her son, and "O Banda (Parade)" livens things up with big drums and a jaunty melody, though unfortunately it's not a very good song.

I think probably, this album was included for context rather than due to any intrinsic merit. Astrud Gilberto was a very influential artist in certain spheres - her deadpan style and bell-like tones show up all over the place in pop music, and Laetitia Sadier owes her career to Gilberto's existence. And I suppose it's important to also have a few albums of light pop just so you can get a sense of what was going at the time outside of the giant albums of the era. Beach Samba also features arrangements by the legendary Eumir Deodato, who's career has spanned everything from jazz funk reinterpretations of Strauss, to Kool and the Gang, to providing the gorgeous string arrangements for Bjork's albums Post and Homogenic. It's fair to say Beach Samba is not his best work - the songs are all impeccably produced and recorded, but there's an overall sense of deliberate inoffensiveness to the record, and it's almost enough to send one to sleep.

So in the end this is not a bad album, just a thoroughly unremarkable one. I like Astrud Gilberto, and I thought "Stay" was lovely, but you'd be better off listening to The Astrud Gilberto Album instead (which features the marvellous "Dindi" and "Agua de Beber"). Beach Samba is definitely better than a lot of this sort of stuff, and it's a pretty consistent album (which is very rare for older pop albums), but I can't help feeling Brazilian music is being done a disservice by the Book. 

75. Nina Simone - Wild Is the Wind (September 1966)

1. I Love Your Lovin' Ways

2. Four Women*

3. What More Can I Say

4. Lilac Wine

5. That's All I Ask

6. Break Down and Let It All Out

7. Why Keep Breaking My Heart

8. Wild Is the Wind*

9. Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair*

10. If I Should Lose You

11. Either Way I Lose

A+

Nina Simone is one of the true giants. Her skill as an arranger and pianist was extraordinary, and she was blessed with one of the greatest voices ever captured on record. Her versatility was also almost unmatched - she could do sweet ("Pour a Little Sugar in My Bowl"), sexy ("Feeling Good"), just plain evil ("I Put a Spell on You"), and everything in between. And this range is perfectly captured on Wild Is the Wind, which embraces everything from straight R&B on "I Love Your Lovin' Ways", to gentle ballads like "That's All I Ask", and the storming, sui generis "Break Down and Let It All Out". And, admittedly, the result is a somewhat uneven album. The high points, however, are so towering that even if Simone had only released this one album she'd still be regarded as a legend.

And about those high points: let's start with the strange and haunting "Four Women". Over a simple groove, Simone sums up in a few words a cross section of African-American stereotypes - an old slave, a child of white-on-black rape, a prostitute, and an angry modern woman named, of all things, Peaches. It's a strange song and difficult to analyse, seeming to highlight the strength of these women in bearing their lots, while at the same time condemning society for marginalising them. The song was, unlike the other pieces on this album, actually written by Simone, and it captures perfectly her famous anger.

The next great song is a cover of "Lilac Wine", a song about lost love and drinking too much that is extremely pretty and moving. It's not especially deep, but it has a lovely arrangement and shows Simone's matchless ability to convey tender emotion. And there's also the beautiful folk ballad "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair", which is a love song but which Simone approaches almost spiritually, singing in clear tones over a spare piano accompaniment.

The real standout, however, is the title track. A reworking of an old pop song, Simone transforms it into a classical aria. Over a bed of piano that calls to mind Rachmaninov in its romantic swirl and intense, complex build to dizzying crescendos, Simone lets loose with a vocal performance so desperate and heartfelt that it's been known to bring tears to my eyes. "Wild Is the Wind" is, in my humble opinion, one of the finest recordings ever made.

The rest of the songs on this album are all pretty great, too. I'm not going to complain that an album only contains four perfect songs. It's mostly lighter, tender pop ballads that flow into one another and create a mood of longing and regret. Reading about Nina Simone in preparation for writing this, I learned that she was quite the tortured, potentially even unhinged woman, who struggled with bipolar disorder. I don't want to reduce her to a stereotype, but I've known a few people with bipolar, and the sometimes frightening shifts between moods almost angelic and demonic definitely comes through in Simone's music. I suppose living with her disorder, and the frequent difficulties she encountered in life, contributed to her astonishing understanding of emotion, and her ability to convey it so brilliantly in her music. In any case, this is a wonderful, strange, whirlwind of an album, and definitely worth seeking out.

74. The Yardbirds - The Yardbirds (a.k.a. Roger the Engineer) (July 1966)

1. Lost Woman*

2. Over Under Sideways Down*

3. The Nazz Are Blue

4. I Can't Make Your Way

5. Rack My Mind

6. Farewell*

7. Hot House of Omargarashid

8. Jeff's Boogie

9. Turn into Earth

10. What Do You Want

11. Ever Since the World Began

B+

So the reissue of this album, currently available on Spotify, starts with two bonus tracks. In the interest of journalistic integrity I made a point of skipping them both times I listened to this. And really, they are pretty good songs, but kicking off with "Lost Woman" just makes sense. It's a thunderous behemoth of a song, building from a soft start to some truly amazing drumming and bass work. And really, the Yardbirds' rhythm section was, based on this album, fucking amazing. This is music that's deeply rooted in the blues, and in 1950s rock, but at the same time very forward-looking. It makes for an interesting contrast - it's sort of like listening to some bizarre hybrid of Howlin' Wolf and the Who. 

What really grabs attention on this album, of course, is Jeff Beck's incredible guitar. Feedback, distortion, sustain - it's all here, propped-up by inventive and technically dazzling playing. And yet all this technical wizardry is put to work serving short, catchy, punchy songs that could I suppose be described as "acid bubble gum". This is psychedelic rock, but it's also mostly dance music, and obviously intended to be radio friendly. The only real exceptions to the "Carl Perkins on acid" sound are the strange piano ballad "Farewell" (which proves the bad weren't just coasting on Beck's guitar but could also write great tunes), and the schizophrenic "Ever Since the World Began" (which starts out like something off the first Black Sabbath album, with lots of droning gloom and muttering about Satan, and then suddenly leaps into a jaunty bit of beat music). Oh, and I suppose "Hot House of Omargarashid", which is basically just three minutes of drumming and wobble boards and deeply odd.

The best song, however, is "Over Under Sideways Down", which features the immortal lyric "When I was young they talked about immorality/ but everything they said was wrong is what I want to be". It's catchy and fun. And really, this whole album is catchy and fun. We haven't had a genuinely fun album in a while, so it's nice to have something to bop along to.

That said, this is great while it's happening but it doesn't have much staying power. The music is great, but the lyrics aren't especially deep - just the usual hippie nonsense about failed relationships, the aftermath of a trip, and how you don't need money to be happy. Nice sentiments, but not particularly mind blowing. And the second half of the album can't really sustain the frenetic, psychedelic mood of the first half.

So this is a very good album, if you happen to like 60s psych and you're interested in the birth of hard rock. It's a fun listen, and features some astonishing playing. Just don't expect it to blow your mind.

73. John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers - Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton (July 1966)

1. All Your Love*

2. Hideaway

3. Little Girl

4. Another Man

5. Double Crossing Time

6. What'd I Say*

7. Key to Love

8. Parchman Farm

9. Have You Heard

10. Ramblin' On My Mind

11. Steppin' Out*

12. It Ain't Right

A-

I think the highest compliment that you can pay this album is that it sounds like generic blues rock. Very well-performed blues rock, mind - I'm no fan of Eric Clapton but I'll never say he didn't know his way around a guitar. And while Clapton is very much the star of the show, the other musicians are note-perfect. You only have to listen to "What'd I Say", which is a real showcase for the band as a whole, and features a killer drum solo. John Mayall's voice is highly interesting, in that instead of the raw, rasping quality one expects from Chicago blues he instead has a high, clear voice. It's a nice contrast with the music and helps give the album its own personality. 

It's not really fair to say that this is just aping Chicago blues, though. Obviously that is the main frame of reference for the music, but this album is pretty innovative. My opening comment had more to do with the fact that this album was obviously so influential that there's not really much to distinguish it, stylistically, from the countless imitators that came after it. So what was once incredibly new and exciting now sounds kind of old hat. 

So perhaps it's better to take Blues Breakers as an excellent example of the form, and examine it in that context. The first thing that strikes you about the album is the clarity and purity of the sound. This isn't a raw album - it's very polished, and very well-recorded. But at a time when studio wizardry was starting to encroach on music it stands out for those very qualities. 

The next thing you notice is Clapton's guitar, which is admittedly pretty great. I will never forgive Eric Clapton for the song "Tears in Heaven" (it is sad that his son died, but maybe he shouldn't have memorialised him with one of the worst songs I've ever heard), but he was at one point an extremely talented and innovative guitarist, perfectly bridging the divide between the blues and hard rock - a genre he would of course help to define with the maddeningly inconsistent Cream. And really, it's not just his playing, but the tone of his guitar - a wonderfully full, lightly distorted sound that hits hard while staying classy. 

Of course this is a group effort, and if you enjoy the blues then this is an album worth seeking out. I, personally, don't have an especial fondness for it. This is a technically flawless album and I can't help but give it high marks, but I've never been especially fond of British Blues. I'm not sure why, really - I think it comes down to my hesitation about Europeans co-opting African-American culture in an attempt to seem more authentic. It borders on a fetishization of the other. But then at the same time, to say that only black people can play the blues risks fetishizing them just as much. So I don't know. I guess it's a dialogue between different cultures and that's always a good thing, even if it did eventually lead to the existence of Eminem and, god help me, skip hop. And in any case, the Blues Breakers seem to have both a genuine reverence and a deep understanding for the music they're playing, which elevates them above most of their peers and gives the album a nice vitality.

Long story short, this is a very fine album. It just happens to be a genre of music I have virtually no interest in. Still, if not for this album there probably never would have been a ZZ Top, and I don't want to live in a world that doesn't contain the song "Legs".

72. The 13th Floor Elevators - The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators (October 1966)

1. You're Gonna Miss Me*

2. Roller Coaster*

3. Splash 1

4. Reverberation*

5. Don't Fall Down

6. Fire Engine

7. Thru the Rhythm

8. You Don't Know

7. Kingdom of Heaven

8. Monkey Island

9. Tried to Hide

A-

One of the nice things about Spotify is that it sometimes includes multiple versions of the same album. As a result, I was able to listen to the original mono and stereo remaster of this album side by side. And honestly, get the mono version. The stereo mix is a hot mess that cranks up the wildness of the music but severely detracts from the coherence of the songs, as well as significantly reducing their oomph. On the mono version, on the other hand, all the instruments blend together into a thick soup of psychedelic weirdness that kicks five kinds of arse.

And believe you me, "psychedelic weirdness" is what this album is about. The liner notes famously advocate LSD use as a means of attaining a higher consciousness. Many of the songs feature an electric jug being played, which sounds like a cross between a pigeon and a moog. And the cover art is so out there it's been known to cause eyes to bleed. 

That said, has time rendered these songs sedate? Perhaps even quaint? Not really. The cornerstone of this album's sound is frenetic, reverb-drenched guitar work reminiscent of the wilder moments of the Who, except that it's kept up for the entire running time. There are a few softer songs to give you a moment to breathe, but even those feature odd harmonies and atonal noodling. If you come to this album expecting a bunch of songs like the classic "You're Gonna Miss Me", then you'll probably be disappointed. That garage anthem is, stylistically, the odd song out. Which is pity, since it's a great song, but at the same time if you're willing to give the more outré tracks a chance this is a pretty rewarding listen. 

Probably what makes this album work is that, a druggy as it gets, the Elevators had a strong sense of song structure, and were effectively writing party songs for drug addicts. So there's always a good sense of rhythm, the songs are concise, and there's usually a chorus you can sing along with. The Psychedelic Sounds... isn't going to knock Freak Out! from its position as the weirdest album we've had so far. 

That said, some of the lyrics are pretty crazy. "Roller Coaster" is a paean to acid, a dark and spooky song with a neat descending guitar line where the listener is urged to let go their inhibitions, take a trip, and experience the nature of true reality. "Reverberation", another highlight, is similar in theme, excepted that it's anchored by one of the biggest, fattest basslines we've had so far. And "Monkey Island" is a pretty great piece of social satire - essentially, the turned-on crowd are all living on Monkey Island, acting like monkeys so they can fit in and don't get taken out by their simian cohabitants. 

In the end, this is a pretty wild album and a lot of fun. It's definitely on the "freak out" end of the psychedelic spectrum, although my limited experience with drugs (I used to smoke a lot of weed, but that's about it) tells me that if I tried to listen to this while high I would probably just get a headache. Definitely worth listening to, just expect the unexpected.

71. Simon & Garfunkel - Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (October 1966)

1. Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme/Canticle*

2. Patterns*

3. Cloudy

4. Homeward Bound

5. The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine

6. The 59th Bridge Street Song (Feelin' Groovy)

7. The Dangling Conversation

8. Flowers Never Bend with the Rainfall

9. A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara'd into Submission)

10. For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her*

11. A Poem on the Underground Wall

12. 7 O'clock News/Silent Night

A+

I'm a big fan of economy in song writing. Not to say that I don't like longer, more expansive songs; but it is nice to here music that gets in and gets out quick, accomplishing what it sets out to do with a minimum of fuss. At 28 minutes long, and featuring twelve songs, PSRAT (I'm not typing that title over and over) is a model of economy in song writing. Most of these songs don't even have a traditional verse-chorus-verse structure. Instead they're little poems, or meditations even, set to music. And what beautiful music! Art Garfunkel's angelic voice floats and bends and twists over bongos, pianos, strings, harpsichords and gentle, picked guitars. The duo co-produced this album, and it's a wonderful example of what happens when perfectionism, talent and good taste all come together in the one place.

The lyrics are also pretty great. This is folk music, but it's not angry or obscure like Bob Dylan, or buried in traditionalism like Joan Baez. Paul Simon writes songs that are an antidote to troubled times (it's no coincidence that the duo would release an album called Bridge Over Troubled Water). His lyrics are poetic, but also direct and easily comprehensible, and rather than trying to curry favour with the freak scene or stick to some imagined ideal of "pure" folk music, he instead deals with the issues that trouble any literate, slightly-alienated person in times as hectic as the mid-to-late 1960s. This is probably what, given the sorry state of our modern world over the last decade, gives the music on this album such staying power. It's not a retreat, or a mockery. There are delicate folk ballads like the title track and "Flowers Never Bend", but there are also songs tackling everything from predetermination and feeling trapped by the modern world (the terrifying "Patterns"), to true romance ("For Emily"), and the hilarious "A Simple Desultory Philippic" - a song which parodies the folk rock excesses of Dylan while at the same time dealing with the crushing weight of information overload and the sense of being buried under current events and changing social standards. It also features the great line "He's so unhip that when you say Dylan, he thinks you mean Dylan Thomas, whoever he was", which is a wonderful dig at hippies and hipsters on an album that name checks Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson.

The best summation of this album is probably the final track, "7 O'clock News/Silent Night", which is hardly subtle but makes a good point. As Simon and Garfunkel sing a very pretty version of the famous carol, a newscaster (starting softly and then getting louder and louder, until he buries the music), reads off a typical news report from the time - the Vietnam War, civil rights protests, the drug overdose of comedian Lenny Bruce, and so forth. It perfectly captures the contrast on this album between a desire for a free, simple, happy life, and the constant intrusion of hassles ranging from the minor to the apocalyptic. 

Above all, though, this album is a massive leap forward, musically, from the folk we've had so far. Simon spent a fair while in the UK, and he seems to have been pretty strongly influenced by the gentler, more adventurous and forward-thinking sounds of British folk. This is lovely, at times challenging, and highly intelligent music for the sort of people I once heard referred to as Triangles - fun, but not too fun. It's music for undergraduate English majors and tired housewives alike, and it's really great.