1. Alone Again Or*
2. A House Is Not a Motel
3. Andmoreagain
4. The Daily Planet
5. Old Man
6. The Red Telephone*
7. Maybe the People Would Be the Times or Between Clark and Hilldale*
8. Live and Let Live
9. The Good Humor Man He Sees Everything Like This
10. Bummer in the Summer
11. You Set the Scene
A+
So this will be an overwhelmingly positive review. In the interest of fairness, please refer to this absolutely spot-on takedown of Forever Changes by AltRockChick. Which I can't find because her site is a mess. So you go do that. I have better things to do (not really, I'm home sick with the flu and, as Irma Thomas might say,time is on my side).
Anyway...
Released in November, eh? Not so much the Summer of Love as the Late Autumn of Love. And really, that suits this album fine. It really is a perfect synthesis of the gorgeous, optimistic music of mid-60s hippiedom with the bleak outlook of the 1970s, when everyone realised that the legacy of the Summer of Love was a bunch of burn-outs, a messy ending to Vietnam, and the wider availability of heroin. Really, this is a deeply strange and beautiful album. How do you classify something that melds gentle, Beatleseque folk rock with Burt Bacharach, mariachi music, classical strings and harpsichord, and occasional ventures into proto-punk (although, as I said when discussing Da Capo, it's more like post-punk before punk happened). As with Pet Sounds, Sergeant Peppers, and the first VU album, first listeners are walking into something completely unexpected and infinitely rewarding.
I suppose it's kind of funny that I like this album so much. Many of the criticisms I've levelled at psych rock albums before are valid here. There are a lot of odd time changes, and the lyrics are frequently impenetrable. But what Arthur Lee and co have done here is focus on the musicality of the proceedings. This is, musically, a beautiful album. And while the lyrics don't always make literal sense, Lee and co-writer Brian McLean have an intuitive grasp of emotional resonance, that makes the songs strike home even when you're not quite sure what they're about.
Speaking of Brian McLean, I should address an issue with this album, and with Love in general. There is very much a myth surrounding Love of Arthur Lee and the tortured genius. But it's worth pointing out that McLean wrote "Alone Again Or", which is easily one of the most beautiful songs recorded - and astonishing examination of what it means to hang all your hopes on a person who doesn't give a damn about you, and just views you as an adjunct. He also wrote the lovely "Old Man", which is the sort of song they'd play at weddings in Heaven.
Ok, with that out of the way, back to Arthur Lee, who wrote all the other tracks. His lyrics are strange and dark and cryptic, but that makes sense. One of the reasons people keep coming back to this album, when so many others are forgotten, is because Lee understood the darkness at the heart of the Summer of Love, and that it was ultimately not going to pan out as people hoped. I mean, it's 2023. How many people do you know who've snorted heroin and taken acid and come out as anything other than fucked? It's almost as though real change had to come through grass roots political action and a total, gradual change of consciousness in the global population! But, yeah - smoke a joint and listen to Country Joe and the Fish. That'll help.
Anyway, I haven't really done this album justice but I can't be bothered going on about it. This is simultaneously one of the most beautiful albums you will ever hear, and the soundtrack to a man going slowly insane. This really is one of the few albums you have to hear before you die.
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