Raising Musical Awareness: Odessey and Oracle

Two summers ago, when I was but 18 years old, I saw 1960’s English pop group The Zombies at Club Regent Casino. I went with my parents. As I looked around at my fellow concert-goers I quickly realized that there were other zombies in the casino beyond the band themselves. In fact, the majority of the audience was comprised of the living dead (or at least near dead). At 52 years old, my mother was very possibly the second youngest person there. I’ve never felt so alone. Or more like George A. Romero.

Via vivoscene.com

There are three albums that, in my own listening experience, serve as pillars of mid to late-sixties pop, achieving everything that wildly overproduced, narcissistic music should be capable of. The first is Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, the second, The White Album by the Beatles. Both these albums are privy to much praise from critics and fans alike, and deservedly so. However, these albums have a prettier, albeit shallower, brother in the form of The Zombies Odessey and Oracle. The Billy Baldwin of Pop Operas.

If sound were liquid, Odessey and Oracle would be a heroin bubble bath. There are few albums that are as immediately and consistently beautiful. The band’s layered harmonies, buoyed by lead singer Colin Blunstone’s vaporous vocals, are alone enough to turn one’s blood into ice-cold cream soda. I mean Goddamn, just look at the cover for this thing. It’s more sixties than tie-dyes and chauvinism.

What the Sacrament of Penance is for Catholics, listening to this album is for me. It’s so impossibly innocent that it is actually capable of forgiving me for my sins. That’s a fact. The sparkling production and thumping piano on ‘Care of Cell 44’ and ‘This Will Be Our’ Year are particularly effective at helping me forget that I’m drifting closer and closer towards complete hedonistic insanity every day. Which is nice.

But that’s not to say that the album is entirely merry. The most obvious exception is the exceptionally morbid ‘Butcher’s Tale (Western Front 1914),’ which, as its subtitle implies, addresses the plight of a shell-shocked former butcher who is fighting in WWI. Additionally, the songs ‘A Rose for Emily’ and ‘Brief Candles’ both deal with the pain of loneliness and how difficult it can be to accept.

The album is loosed themed around the seasons. In fact, three songs – A Rose for Emily, Changes, and Beechwood Park – all mention summer within their opening line. Therefore it is only appropriate that the album closes with what is perhaps The Zombies most famous tune (and certainly among the top ten seduction songs of all-time) ‘Time of the Season.’ And it’s only after an album this good that you can get away with asking “What’s your name? Who’s your daddy? Is he rich like me?” Such panache.

Listening Recommendations: For solace on any rainy day or moment of borderline spiritual/emotional desolation.