Saturday, November 15, 2014

Album Review # 29 The Zombies - Odessy & Oracle


A repost for a review I wrote while watching a World Cup Semi Final in July with the sound turned down. And clearly getting steadily drunk.
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A warm summers evening. 2014 World Cup drawing to a close. Argentina and Holland in their beautiful classical strips set out on a field of green somewhere in Brazil in the second semi. Summoning memories of sixteen years ago when Bergkamp curled an impossible volley into the far, top corner in the dying minutes of extra time in France to help The Netherlands progress to the last four. Or twenty years before that when Kempes streaked through tickertape in spell cast, dictator driven Buenos Aires to win the trophy in the dead end of the drab, dark seventies. Is that enough d's for you?
 
I've got the sound turned down though my fingers are crossed for Messi. The last heroic, point of principle I can see in this World Cup. Though it's small hope. I'm listening to The Zombies last, posthumous album from almost fifty years ago. It's a record that has increased in terms of reputation  since it was released and the group split. Barely acknowledged when it came out and still not well-known when I was coming of age in the mid-eighties, it's since mutated into a British Forever Changes or Pet Sounds to stand beside Sgt. Pepper. At least in terms of reputation Let's see.
 
 
The cover is pastoral whimsy, which you'd hope and wish for and first song Care of Cell 44 strikes all the right chords. Pastoral, greet the new dawn mid sixties optimism, entitled public school boy harmonies, organ driven, tasteful musicianship, making some kind of stiff-upper lipped, very English stand against The Beach Boys.
 
Second song A Rose For Emily lets down the already established mood. A sad song for the very same Emily who went through life without ever once being being courted, snogged or perhaps even yearned after. 'The sky is overcast. And no-one brings a rose for Emily.' I'll spare you the details. It trickles on in this gruesome vein for the best part of three minutes. It's a sickly, sorry tragic relative of Eleanor Rigby, strangely and surely coincidentally the second track on its own record Revolver.
 
 
Things pick up from here. Odessey slips easily into a classical, bucolic groove. It 's one of the great English pastoral records. Maybe After He's Gone and Beechwood Park seal the deal. It's walking down the lane with the posh boy from the school on the hill or the rosy cheeked blond girl you hope might give out a little if you persuade her to lie down beside you in the grassy, deserted meadow. Whichever you fancy most. It's strangely sexless, well-mannered and unthreatening in that respect.
 
 
The album never really lets off from this point on. The Zombies are in their element. If they're not in walled town parks, they're trudging down cobbled lanes fringed by rose gardens. They're enclosed in visions, harmonies and musical approximations of the great British outdoors. It's all effortlessly tasteful. Made for the ages. It encloses you in sights and familiar smells. For anyone partial to Traffic, Nick Drake or Syd's Pink Floyd it's instantly familiar territory. Not authentic folk by any stroke, or seriously druggy and visionary like Strawberry Fields Forever but a persuasive Southern precinct town approximation of what it feels like to be English amongst all that lovely nature.
 
 
Meanwhile Holland, Argentina draws to half-time, predictably goalless, despite the pleasant dreamlike colours emanating from my screen. Time to listen to mindless ITV chat orchestrated by the charmless Adrian Chiles before giving Side 2 its turn.
 
 
They're lined up again on the grass field in Brazil. I lower the needle onto its own black sea. Side 2 starts with Changes but really there's no change from the steady, confident order established on Side 1. Nature is by no means a violent threat of any sort. Quite the opposite in fact. It's a bucolic, comforting, grassy bed to enclose yourself in. Comforting and immersive .
 
 
That's not to say I don't like the record. I do. I was brought up in this sure, secure other world perspective. It's certainly a lot less predictable and more three dimensional than this Holland Argentina stalemated game barely threatening to unfold before me on my TV screen.
 
 
The album's tenth song, Butchers Boy 1914 strikes a rare jarring chord. Of course it's all trench warfare, clichéd visions of them and us, death and decay and vague dissent from the perspective of privileged musical youths. Still, it's nicely done and kept as brief and melodic as the other more easeful material it's bedded in.
 
On to Friend's of Mine which re-establishes the happy mood. And from there to Time of The Season. The great posthumous American hit which sounds just like a British approximation of The Doors just as The Doors sounded like an American approximation of She's Not There. It even seems to have a Ray Manzarek solo. Really, I can't discuss it here. Good a pop song as it is, it really doesn't belong in this context. I'll post it and hope you agree.
 
 
 
There's nothing wrong with Odessey & Oracle. It's actually got a lot going for it. It's a perfectly good approximation of English pastoral though most of the nature it depicts seems to be tastefully parcelled and restricted. It's attractive for this very reason. It's certainly better company than this bloody game which seems as tangled as a ball of wool after half an hour amongst a gang of frantic kittens. I'll take it off. The record I mean. Put Bitches Brew on instead. I'll place the album back in the rack. Amongst the Z's. Pretty much alone amongst the Z's. I own no Zappa. But I'll play it again. Every few months. Much less than Astral Weeks. But that's no crime. Probably more than Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
 

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