I am still a bit stunted on this list due to the holidays, but here is my friend review of this album. Also, after several listen to this album, I am at a loss for words still.
Forever Changes by Love
Well this is a very expensive and well produced album. The first track sounds like a new take on classical gas and MacArthur Park. Awesome! It takes me back to a time where amazingly positive and intense life changing chord changes were happening all the time in music.
The second song goes to psychedelic lyric land, where Syd Barret is the mayor.
However,making Apocalyptic references from the Bible was edgy at the time but now feels old hat. Our first clue that this album hasn't held up over time.
I categorize this as being maybe one of the first albums in the category of music that I call sensitive beard music (1). It may be groundbreaking in that respect. Something along the lines of the Moody blues by the music that was going on at that time using lots of orchestration and well thought out lyrics and genre bending the styles. The first song uses the classical Spanish guitar progression with trumpet to back it up Herb Alpert style.
Overall I’m not sure what to make of this album. But it got to be in the top 500. It’s a groundbreaking album.
It occurs to me on the fourth track on the album that the singer is using his voice in an old fashioned forced and stilted way that I thought was fading at this time in folk music history. John Belushi destroyed a man’s guitar in “Animal House” for singing like this and we should all be thankful.
Track five and six sounds hints at that indescribable cool album some nerdy kid owned back in junior high school. Probably a Jethro Tull fan.
At the time none of the cool kids liked this music and harassed the nerdy kid because of his weird taste.
Time passes and the nerdy kid finally sees his old junior high album show up on the Rolling Stone top 500 albums of all time list.
And he still gets slammed on Facebook because all the cool kids still don't think it's cool. I’m thinking that fans of Love suffer for their taste on a daily basis like this.
The album begins faltering at around track eight. It contains one of those guitar solos that plays out in a forced way---it goes on too long and sounds like newly learned licks--- and the guitarist just keeps repeating them in this sloppy manner as if to drive home the urgent point of their deep psychedelic meaning. Which is a sound I appreciate in lots of bands, but here it sounds out of place and compelling only in the sense that you find yourself reaching to turn down this annoying sound.
But this album has a definite attraction---Just really not the date you want to bring home for the evening. She talks too much and doesn’t make sense and seems like she’s on something.
It’s hard to say what went off track with this album. I don’t know why the critics picked it to be on the list. I am curious to hear other albums by them, but these will be approached with some trepidation.
(1) Sensitive Beard Music—A style of music first referenced in a conversation in 2013 between members of the band Gilchards Jaunt. It refers to a sound that is used currently by bands that generally have acoustic instruments and sing earnestly using an unaffected folk voice (aka. the voice God gave ya), sometimes in falsetto, with lyrics revealing themes of a personal nature. It is likewise noted that many of these bands have at least one member with a beard. Usually a large beard cut in a classic old time style. Examples include: Iron and Wine, Mumford and Sons, The Avett Brothers, Neutral Milk Hotel. It is important to note that while Cat Stevens, Jim Morrison, Jerry Garcia, Kenny Rodgers, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings etc etc… have all worn beards of a disturbing nature during their musical careers and have no doubt influenced the more modern bands to which I refer, they do not qualify as Sensitive Beard Music.
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