Psychedelic
Noah’s Barks pages relating to the psychedelic genre. Combine with other tags for subgenres, e.g. “psychedelic+pop” or “psychedelic+rock.”
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Comus – “Song to Comus: The Complete Collection”
First Utterance is an essential album, and the remastering of it on Song to Comus: The Complete Collection is very tasteful and enough for me to consider it an improvement over the original (apparently the first CD issues of First Utterance had terrible sound quality, so there’s another reason to get this set). There are… (read more)
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Grizzly Bear – “Shields”
No Grizzly Bear album is well-rounded, but Shields comes closest. For the first time, its sonic peaks are worth traversing an album for, especially since they’re tactfully spread out. (read more)
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The Smashing Pumpkins – “Gish” (1991)
The Smashing Pumpkins’s first album Gish arrived at the forefront of the coming alternative rock and grunge movement, and like other acclaimed bands of the time, the Pumpkins pioneered the new sound and attitude shift from the currently mainstream ’80s heavy metal/glam scene. The Pumpkins certainly know how to rock just as hard, and they… (read more)
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The Electric Prunes – “The Electric Prunes”
There’s a little bit of all the great ’60s rock acts here. Considering The Electric Prunes formed in ’65, it’s clear that they’re trying to latch onto a scene. But integrity in pop music can be forgiven if the songs are good—so are they? (read more)
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Tim Buckley – “Blue Afternoon”
‘Blue Afternoon’ returns Tim Buckley to a more conventional, modest-length song format, a departure from the ethereal album cohesion shown prior. (read more)
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The Mothers of Invention – “Freak Out!” (1966)
The fantastic thing about Freak Out! is that Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention made it as a direct satire of dippy-hippie flower power culture, yet even as a psychedelic rock album it competes at the quality level of its sincere, acclaimed contemporaries. If not, it surpasses them with its sense of humor and… (read more)
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XTC – “Skylarking” (1986)
On Skylarking, songs are varied, have compelling instrumentation, and most importantly, are great. I kept listening to Skylarking expecting the quality to suddenly take a nosedive after each track, like many seemingly great albums (disappointingly) do—but it never happened. Fan-flippin-tastic psychedelic pop. Absolutely loaded. I disagree with those who say it sounds very similar to… (read more)
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David Bowie – “David Bowie” (1969)
There are some serious hints of brilliance on 1969‘s David Bowie in its beautiful psychedelic/folk songs “Space Oddity” and “Letter to Hermione.” “Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud” and “Memory of a Free Festival” also deserve some mention. Most tracks on here have interesting segments to them, like the beginning of “Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed.”… (read more)
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Can – “Ege Bamyası”
‘Ege Bamyasi’ is the most bizarre cocktail lounge album ever made, and "Sing Swan Song" in particular is not of this world and invites me away from it. Best Can album and song? Very possible. (read more)
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Sonic Youth – “A Thousand Leaves” (1998)
Latter career Sonic Youth, meaning A Thousand Leaves sounds more melodic than their earlier stuff and has less of an attitude. That’s not a bad thing though, because the band has crafted some beautiful stuff past their heyday, and some of it’s on this album. The Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo tracks are consistently great… (read more)