Released

This record is capable of catching you unawares, even 50+ years after its release. Even just “Some Velvet Morning” alone is utterly bizarre, a bit of Hollywood kitsch shot through with acid-drenched mysticism and cut and shunting two songs together seemingly arbitrarily. But then there’s  “Storybook Children”: as easy-listening as any Perry Como album, and as eerily psychedelic as a Syd Barrett mock nursery rhyme. There’s an opiated take on “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling.” The meeting of the gutsy megastar’s daughter and the louche country producer / baritone weirdo in the heat of pop psychedelia was always going to be peculiar, but who could have predicted it would be just this weird. Classic status entirely deserved.

Joe Muggs