1969! God! whatayear
Super solid folk-flavored rock album, full of great hooks, solid melodies, harmonies past the sunrise, and a great combination of sounds and textures that just work together.
A Proper Rock Album as we know and enjoy it, blueprinted by some combination of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and The Beach Boys circa 66 or so, demands a certain amount of variety, demands ups and downs and arounds; narrative; geography.
I indulge the theory wonkery because this album's greatest strength is its ability to explore a Venn diagram of styles, using the overlaps to lay out a sensical musical map, with terrain out of the finest road trip, choreographed and unexpected. There's hardcore, mythical folk (Guinnevere) bleeding into poppier, hookier Simon and Garfunkel folk (You Don't Have to Cry), into a psychedelic turn (Pre-Road Downs), around to heavy Youngian rock (Wooden Ships) and back to a song called Lady of the Island, which, as you've probably guessed by now, leads us pretty much full circle.
Bookending this little roundabout are some of the album's most solid tracks, including the timeless Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, with threads of wistfulness, crunch, and lazy all throughout. I don't love the harmonies (I might not like harmonies in general, I'm learning), but the fact this works for me as well as it does in spite of that fact is something of an achievement.
The Proper Rock Album, for all its perfection, usually shows seams and buffed rivet dimples and signs of meticulous planning and effot. This is an album that comparitively feels like it just emerged into the world, everything in its right place, a vision of a voice with a vision, strangely effortless.
That said, after all that praise, this will seem stingy. But, man, fucking harmonies. Call it the very highest end of 4/5
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