1. mad river - mad river
stood on my doorstep after you’d gone,
heart full of feather and pieces of bone,
went to the river, hoping you’d come,
your eyes full of lightning, and your hair all undone.
this herky jerky, spidery nightmare is to me the definitive response to the vietnam war, dwelling in the cracks left by acid binges and PTSD, unstable and desperate and wailing as it fumbles toward some semblance of sanity. it's my favourite album of the sixties if not all time; the record hangs on my bedroom wall.
2. the incredible string band – the hangman’s beautiful daughter
there is no land, the night is all around my child
you must stop imagining all this,
you must stop imagining all this for your own good,
why don’t you go with the rest and play down stairs
closing my eyes i see him so clear,
the blood on his sword flashes so bright as it
falls to the skulls by his feet.
but his eyes they know all things,
his eyes they know all.
these guys became scientologists not too long after this record, and i mean, they sound like people who would become scientologists. that would be a problem if i was grading them on their intellect, but thankfully i love surreal, hermetic folk records by crazy people, and this is among the most surreal and hermetic i know. the double-album from this year is very good as well but a little less consistent to my mind.
3. the zombies – odessey and oracle
and i, and i can’t stop shaking
my hands won’t stop shaking
my arms won’t stop shaking
my mind won’t stop shaking
i want to go home
please let me go home
go home
unlike a lot of revisionist internet heathens i don’t consider this to be better than
pet sounds, finding it a little too wispy and cringeworthily earnest at times, but it is for sure one of the most coherent sixties pop records, with the melancholy autumnal throughline and lack of straight filler really standing out in an era when most bands hadn’t really figured out the album format yet. it also has its moments of genuine darkness and is catchy as all hell, from the exhilarated chorus of ‘care of cell 44’ to the deservedly legendary single ‘time of the season’.
4. jacks – vacant world
i'll let
'marianne' speak for these gloomy japs, as powerful as anything coming out of the western psych scene of the period.
5. the lollipop shoppe – just colour
as a dead moon fanboy i was always gonna like this one, which is surprisingly not that far away from what they would eventually become (albeit a little more entrenched in the psych and folk of the period), and contains songs cole would later rerecord under that name.
6. tyrannosaurus rex – prophets, seers & sages: the angels of the ages
i think of early t-rex as being buddy holly's 'peggy sue' taken to the next level.
7. ed askew – ask the unicorn
legendary obscure loner singer-songwriter record for slitting your wrists to.
8. iron butterfly – in-a-gadda-da-vida
when this album is bad it’s pretty fucking bad, and the more straightforwardly appealing
heavy, which also peaks pretty high with ‘possession’ and ‘unconscious power’, may suit others better. the reason i prefer this one is that it’s an album at odds with itself in a way that defines the best of the sixties for me. it’s some hippy dippy trippy shit about being happy and naked and dancing in the flowers like a bunch of big gay homos, except for some reason anxiety and death keep creeping in through the back door. the guitarwork on this album was an inspiration to me as a teenager and continues to stand amongst my favourites, evoking an innocence that’s always on the edge of crumbling into something distressing. ‘my mirage’ is one of my all-timers from this era for this reason, and far more appealing to me than the more celebrated B-side.
9. savage rose – in the plain
basically a happy medium between the girl group movement and the jefferson airplane boom, consistently evading formula and wanky experimentation when so few of their contemporaries could do so for a full-length album. annisette is one of the more extraordinary female vocalists of the ‘60s.
10. the soft machine – s/t
pretty undeniable with killer peaks.
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honorable mentions
erica pomerance – you used to think
townes van zandt – for the sake of the song
captain beefheart – strictly personal
the incredible string band – wee tam & the big huge
quicksilver messenger service – s/t
kind of a random list but i'm not that big on most of this year's sacred cows.
