Sound Advice: CD Reviews - Love (Forever Changes)

CD Review:
You will get very little argument from anyone that this one of the greatest albums ever put to vinyl. The mix of orchestral music with rock creating a psychedelic experience that is immensely pleasurable.

This is the third and last album by the members of Love. After, Arthur Lee continues with the name but the rest of the band had moved on. Arthur never reached this level of talent with the plethora of musicians he brought in afterward.

What's funny is that the band was only half interested in doing this project. Electra got sick of screwing around and began recording with a backing band until the band got its act together.

This is another band that doesn't suffer from having two lead singers. Lee and Maclean both take turns and sing together which adds even more to the album.

Although there is so much to say about this album, like the cross germination of styles like the flamenco sound of "Alone Again Or" or the harder guitar rock that kicks in at the end of "A House Is Not A Motel" and "Live And Let Live" or even the way the band add horns throughout the album, what I most like about the album is the singing. The song structures are amazing. The harmonizing is crisp and the music follows perfectly with the vocals moving higher or lower as the case may be.

There are two main tricks that the band uses when it sings that I enjoy because they add that little extra hook to the album. The first is the way the each member of the band will sing out a different word at the end of a verse. The second is with the song "Maybe the People..." where a verse starts off with a word that you expected to be the last word of the previous verse.

Overall, the albums lyrics are dark but the music is not. This is another attraction of the album. It represents the time quite well as the illusion that love solves all problems which was so prevalent during '60s was not the utopia it was cracked up to be.

One of the top 10 albums ever released, Love's Forever Changes is a '60s masterpiece that gets heavy play on my stereo since I finally got to hear it in 2001 (it was re-mastered and issued on CD). Now if only I could find their first two albums on CD!

Scott D. Brown