They're not just those Turn Turn Turn guys, not just the curious country crossovers on Sweetheart of the Rodeo: listen to this and hear the Byrds revealed as kaliedescopic, psychadelic trans-pop superstars with flashes of Kinks/Small Faces/Zombies/Beatles/The Who brilliance in turn, spiked with some truly original moves all their own.
Just consider the first 3 tracks: the proto-Cake trumpeting on the opener, the crackling solo notes, (some of the finest of the decade) on Have You Seen Her Face, the batshit backwards aliens closing CTA-102! Each shows the influence of contemporary fashions, but each also seems ahead of its time and abreast the era's boundaries and just so slightly outside reality. It's occasionally sloppy (Mind Gardens is a thorough miss, Everybody's Been Burned goes nowhere and sounds like a Zombies B-Side at best) but the whole thing is so bursting with ideas and irresistible bounce and just the right number of B's per M that you can't help but love it. An underappreciated masterpiece 4.5/5
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