The Zombies - ODESSEY & ORACLE
Tell me Revolver is the greatest album of all
time, and I will vehemently disagree. Tell me Odessey & Oracle is the most perfect pop album ever released,
and I won’t say one word against. Seriously. You have to be a stone-hearted,
tasteless, pretentious slob not to be converted by the first chorus of “Care Of
Cell 44”.
Yet there’s something
about this album manages to transcend the tragic fragility of “Rose For Emily”,
the dizzying infectiousness of “Friends” and the subtle seduction of “Time Of
The Season”. It’s the least likely song on Odessey
& Oracle. It’s “Butcher’s Tale (Western Front 1914)”, this album’s
brilliant juxtaposition. It features irresistible accordion background
underneath the sort of harrowing, brutal lyrics that seem so surreal in the context of
this album that you are left awe-struck and wonderfully bewitched.
It ends up being the
album’s highest point and the song that best accentuates the tuneful perfection
of the whole record. And whatever bland, irrelevant albums The Zombies may be
releasing these days (one is out just now, or so I hear), Odessey & Oracle remains the ultimate Pop Nirvana for the 60s
and for whatever came after it.
