Released after The Zombies had split the band didn't play the album until over 30 years after it was released. Whilst largely ignored at the time of its release the intervening years had been kind and it's become something of a cult psychedelic pop classic.
ODESSEY & ORACLE was the bands third album. Their biggest song had been the transatlantic hit 'She's Not There' four years earlier and they'd not managed to repeat the same success. The Abbey Road recording sessions for ODESSEY & ORACLE had been fractious and personally expensive for the band. They'd blown the labels meagre budget to deliver only a Mono version, not realising that they were also required to deliver a Stereo mix too. They had to pay for that out of their own pockets. Ouch.
The two singles, 'Friends of Mine' and 'Care of Cell 44' had both flopped and in December '67 the band decided to call it a day, four months before the album as a whole finally came out. Sadly a year later in early '69 'Time Of The Season' became a hit Stateside but by then it was too late and the main songwriters, Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone were both in new bands and there was no chance of The Zombies reforming.
It's a pretty, sweetly melancholic album that sits alongside other Baroque / Chamber Pop albums like Love's Forever Changes or The Kinks Village Green Preservation Society. The usual bass, guitar and drums augmented with piano and that classic sixties instrument the mellotron, which gives the whole record that warmly nostalgic feel. The arrangements owe a debt to the semi-classical songs on Pet Sounds and Revolver like 'God Only Knows' and 'For No One'. The perfect vocal harmonising on tracks like 'Changes' or 'Brief Candles' are pure Beach Boys.
There are the dreamy lyrics of loves lost or unrequited that you expect from this period of '60s pop. Particularly special is 'Maybe After He's Gone' where the title is followed hopefully by the line "she'll come back, and love me again". So sad. "This Will Be Our Year' and 'Beechwood Park' are similarly sweet.
Elsewhere there are songs that take much darker subject matter and wrap them up in The Zombie's exquisite melodies. 'Care Of Cell 44' is a love letter to a prison inmate. 'A Rose For Emily' is an Eleanor Rigby type tragic tale of a woman that never finds love: "And as the years go by / She will grow old and die / The roses in her garden fade away / Not one left for her grave / Not a rose for Emily".
The standout track in terms if lyrics alone is 'Butchers Tale (Western Front, 1914)'. It recounts the experience of a young disillusioned soldier who signed up to fight in WWI and just wants to return home. CBS released it as a single in the US in the hope it would capture anti-Vietnam sentiment an be a hit. It's anti-war lyrics are especially powerful:
"A butcher yes that was my trade / But the king's shilling is now my fee / A butcher I may as well have stayed / For the slaughter that I see.
And the preacher in his pulpit / Sermon: "Go and fight, do what is right" / But he don't have to hear these guns / And I'll bet he sleeps at night."
ODESSEY & ORACLE is pretty close to being a perfect album. Twelve exquisitely arranged, neat little songs, all delicately performed.
'CARE OF CELL 44'
'BUTCHERS TALE (WESTERN FRONT, 1914)'
'TIME OF THE SEASON'
No comments:
Post a Comment