Posted 02/07/07

An album you should own:

The Zombies
Odessey and Oracle, 1968 CBS.

Mike Morris | managing editor
mmorris2@smcvt.edu

Listeners often refer to the Brian Wilson-esque “California sound” of the Zombies 1968 record, Odessey and Oracle, which is now approcahing its fourtieth year as pop music's other famous misspelling. Except the Zombies are British and except they mixed jazz influences into their pop sound with a dexterity not found among any band from California (and better than all but a few bands from anywhere) and except it's totally unfair to label their only true album as mere derivation. Their trademark jazz-tinged harmonies and inventive mellotron phrasings (used because the band couldn’t afford studio musicians) blended into otherwise typical catchy-as-hell Brit-pop never brought the Zombies commercial success, but Odessey and Oracle has come to be regarded as one of the best albums of its time by critics.

The album did feature one song, “Time of the Season,” a slow-burning bassy number with some decade-appropriate organ breakdowns that made it to the charts in 1969 (topped at number three on the Billboard), but by the time it reached the airwaves the Zombies had broken up (or been broken up) for financial reasons. As a result, many schemers toured under the name The Zombies, looking to capitalize on the success of the track, but none had any relation to the actual band.

Despite its popularity, “Time of the Season” is not the best track on the album. Several others stand out as better than the most famous cut. The opening track, “Care of Cell 44,” with its bouncy rhythm and hammered chords, has to be the jangliest song ever written about a sweetheart in prison.

“Saved you the room you used to stay in every Sunday
The one that is warmed by sunshine every day
And we'll get to know each other for a second time
And then you can tell me 'bout your prison stay...”

That’s probably how I’d feel too.

“I Want Her She Wants Me” opens with a filtered bass run spread across two audio channels. It disappears too early in the song, but it’s replaced by some great falsetto harmonies and a harpsichord riff, placing the entire song in a dog-whistle register. It all works to stunning effect.

The next track, “This Will Be Our Year,” takes an upbeat major chord piano progression and is one of the most outwardly poppy (and downright charming) songs on the album, with singer Colin Blunstone channeling a little bit of George Harrison into his voice. It's the kind of track that would have been just below the popular radar at any point in the past 35 years, its artfully low production value keeping it from achieving widespread success. Following it is “Butcher’s Tale (Western Front 1914)” an experimental comment on World War I with timeless elements.

“The preacher in his pulpit sermon:
‘Go and fight, do what is right’
But he don't have to hear these guns
And I'll bet he sleeps at night”

As a whole, the songs of Odessey and Oracle circle around reserved psychedelica and straight-up pop, less far-out than most contemporary records, and with more musical skill. It’s a more even record than Sgt. Pepper’s, and while it is generally not regarded in the pantheon of 60s pop albums like the Beatles release, it probably should be. Too fleeting to have any affect on most bands, Odessey and Oracle is still a collection of great artsy pop songs too good to be ignored, even if they were when first released.