Song of Innocence album cover
Song of Innocence

David Axelrod

1968
Capitol Records

If all David Axelrod had done was take the reins of a bunch of great Electric Prunes and Cannonball Adderley albums, the Capitol A&R man/producer/arranger would still be a highly revered cult icon to hip-hop beatheads and baroque-psych enthusiasts. But with late ’60s pop sprawling in increasingly far-flung experimental ways, Axelrod decided he wanted to go auteur and join in. That led him to this first LP under his own name, a William Blake-inspired instrumental opus that became a remarkable curio of session-band studio psychedelia. With Capitol’s fabled Wrecking Crew at his call, Axelrod shaped the core band and a dozens-long list of horn and string section players into an entity that made Spector’s Wall of Sound feel like a picket fence in comparison. What came out of it was an album that was too baroque for acid rock, too heavy for sunshine pop, and too informed by Axelrod’s versatile eclecticism for nearly any other category you could file it under — though at its best moments, like the symphonic heroism of “Urizen” and “The Mental Traveler” or the glorious ascent of “Holy Thursday,” you could call it something close to divinity.

Nate Patrin

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