Thursday, August 9, 2012

#553 The Band - The Band

1969!

There's the seeds of a lot of roots rock sounds here, evoking Neil Young and a kind of proto-skynyrd, mixed with a trippy element (tell me Whispering Pines doesn't sound like a Flaming Lips b-side).

The sound is bouncy and southern-fried (though The Band was, contrarily, from Canada), with honky-tonk and blues elements to spare, lending the album the lazy, feel-good vibe you'd expect.

There's something clumsy about this though: some awkward fadeouts, some uneven mixing, the vocals sounding beyond-Neil-Young strained. It doesn't quite work. Maybe that's part of its charm, but it doesn't wholly work for me, surely not competing the other great, similar albums of the era 3/5

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