By the Byrds.
Sweetheart of the Rodeo gets all the well deserved love, but this album, which came out right before, is my favorite. It’s the band’s first time embracing country music, but they haven’t quite left the psychedelic era; they’re in a state of transition.
The album glides by like a series of daydreams— of laid back mornings and acid-eyed evenings, fading romances, pastoral fantasies and whole lifetimes circling back on themselves.
Beautiful harmonies, unique guitar tones, strings, pedal steel and Moog synth contribute to an atmosphere not found in the work of their contemporaries. It might be one of the last great 60s psych records, but it is also the beginning of soft rock, of dream pop, and alt country.
