album of the day, vol II

The Notorious Byrd Brothers- The Byrds (1968)

   Last summer, I had a bit of a '60s/psychedelic music renaissance. Psychedelic music is what started it all for me in high school, and then my taste went through a series of phases (2000s indie, freak folk, anacortes/olympia stuff, 70s punk, 80s indie; not necessarily in that order). It had been a long while since I'd listened to and enjoyed a session with Jefferson Airplane, the Dead, or Pink Floyd. One reason for this hiatus was probably my two-year long residence in Humboldt County, California, where the people in the dorm building across from me would listen to the same 3 Pink Floyd albums day-in and day-out (Dark Side, Wish You Were Here, The Wall) and guys would actually put on "Purple Haze" when lighting up a joint. This was a period of time when I listened to Raw Power and HEALTH loudly in my room and shut myself off from social interaction. No good.
  
   But after I moved back to Southern California in May 2009, that thirst for the psychedelic and  pleasantly experimental started up again. This resulted in a lot of purchases, an unhealthy amount of money spent on old records. But most relevantly, I got almost every major '60s Byrds album within the span of about two months (I still haven't found Sweetheart of The Rodeo for a decent price; I think I saw Ballad of Easy Rider at Burger last time I was there, but I didn't have the funds).
  
   Which leads me to this album. While The Byrds didn't necessarily go through the dramatic stylistic shifts that characterize the catalogs of The Beatles or Dylan, they did have three pretty distinct phases. This album finds them right smack in the middle of a transition between the second and the third; the psychedelic flourishes of Younger Than Yesterday sit next to conspicuous hints at the country-tinged sound yet to come. This is The Byrds at their most hippy-dippy (consciousness-expanding philosophical lyrics, horn sections, phase shifting), but the songwriting is still there, thank god. The trademark vocal harmonies, breezy pedal-steel guitar work, and spacey atmospherics all combine to make this a great album for lazy sunday mornings (or incidentally, days off from school, like today).




sidenote: What was it with psychedelia and songs about airplanes and spaceships? The trippiness of being in one place and then a few hours later being 700 miles away?