Album Reviews

This is the album to play for any of your friends who insist that Donovan just doesn’t rock. The Jeff Beck Group pop in to kick the crap out of the title track, while “Superlungs” also shakes the foundations. (OK, I’m not pretending Deep Purple or Black Sabbath would be shaking in their boots. But heavy they are, my friend.) Elsewhere Don goes “Hey Jude” one better with “Atlantis” by going from spoken introduction to ecstatic freakout, omitting any actual song. “To Susan On The West Coast Waiting” is one of the best anti-war songs in a period not noticeably lacking in anti-war songs, and one of the few that actually expresses empathy for the soldiers doing the fighting. Elsewhere you have the lusty delights of “Pamela Jo” and “Trudi”. And if there’s also a piece of psychedelic silliness called “I Love My Shirt”, well, what did you expect? This is Donovan, remember. A remarkably satisfying listen that still sounds great, if a little short (about 32 minutes in total). –Brad

McGuinn wasn’t the most talented songwriter in the Byrds (that was Gene Clark) or the most innovative (that was Chris Hillman), but he was probably the most solid musician and definitely the classiest vocalist. On this album, though, he’s working at peak form and the end result is a minor classic. He’s backed by Dylan’s Rolling Thunder band (here called Guam) and producer-guitarist Mick Ronson, who throws a handful of gravel into McGuinn’s sometimes too-sweet sound. There’s also a strong focus and consistency that his often too diverse other albums lack. The original material — “Take Me Away”, especially — is fine, but the high points are songs by Rolling Thunder collaborators Dylan and Joni Mitchell, both unreleased at the time (and for years after). Of course it wouldn’t be a McGuinn album without a traditional song, and he turns in a lovely, chilling performance on the old ballad “Pretty Polly”. His best post-Byrds work? Almost certainly. –Brad

While the Grateful Dead don’t play on Garcia’s first solo album — it’s Jerry on everything except drums, which Bill Kreutzmann plays — you can, fairly, call this a Dead album in disguise. Not only did the six songs on the record all enter the band’s repertoire, most of them becoming mainstays, but the music very much inhabits the same sound world as Workingman’s Dead or American Beauty. Imagining those songs with, say, Bob Weir’s “Playing in the Band” and a Pigpen tune or two is enough to make you mourn the Great Dead Album That Wasn’t. Still, never mind; this is far and away Garcia’s best solo record, and even with the creepy sound experiments that fill out the second side — which I happen to like but clash somewhat — this just misses the full five stars. Apparently it’s Cher’s favourite album ever! –Brad

Kicking off with an appropriately incendiary and doom-laden cover of a song best known from the Band’s Big Pink, this is not your L.A. hippie’s Byrds. Or is it? It’s a schizophrenic mess, really, as befits its title: the second track is a bounding little country ditty dedicated to a late dog, and, as a dog lover, I have to say I’ve got a soft spot for this, but it’s an unintegrated piece of a puzzling mess of a record, with a backhanded ode to the shitkickers that inspired their foray into country and western in the first place; a few remnants of their early psychedelic folk; a bizarre blues medley that doesn’t sound like much of anything (and not really in a good way); and a few other hybrids of the kind that would later prompt the term “alt-country.” These, and a really great proto-metal tune called “Bad Night at the Whisky.” Scattershot in song-form, production, and the level of commitment in its songwriting and performance, it’s really a McGuinn solo record backed up with a bunch of studio players who’re not always providing a sympathetic setting for the man’s restless (do I mean aimless?) creativity. Even so, I’d agree with reviewers who say this record doesn’t really get its due, ’cause sometimes there’s something to be said for schizophrenic messes—especially those that have such a strange, dark undercurrent. I probably prefer this to some of their more lauded releases. –Will

For this, I will forgive all the frat boy anthems. For this, I will forgive “Dancing in the Dark”. Hell, I’ll forgive Springsteen’s entire post-1985 career for this haunted, scarifying record that seems beamed directly in from a black and white movie from 1949. In its own strange way it’s as avant-garde as any French new wave film; here’s an eternally rural America where teenagers kill their families, the churches are filled with bodies, the highway stretches out endlessly before us and it’s always the hour before dawn. –Brad