Forever Changes

  • Type: Music
  • By: Love
  • Age Category: Adults
  • Genre: Rock
  • Recommended by: Mark N.
  • ISBN/UPC: 081227993849
  • Check Catalog

"For every happy hello, there will be goodbye." A deceptively gorgeous psychedelic masterpiece.

One of my all-time favorite albums turns 50 years old the month of this writing (November 2017). Love's Forever Changes, a record that seamlessly combines lush melodicism, surrealism, and dark menace. Love was a multi-racial band from Los Angeles (at a time when this was an oddity in the music business), and this record--pretty much their undisputed masterpiece--has always seemed to be  the musical encapsulation of late '60s glamourous and glitzy L.A., with danger and chaos lurking in the shadows.
 
The albums' 11 tracks include mariachi horns, Herb Alpert-esque "Lonely Bull" flourishes, proto-rap, garage rock, and faux baroque chamber pieces. Many of the songs feature gently strummed acoustic guitars periodically interrupted by brief bursts of raging electric guitar, used almost as emphatic punctuation.
 
Vocalist Arthur Lee has been described as a "psychedelic Johnny Mathis," and his unusual, surrealistic lyrics weave between romantic ruminations and menacing warnings of danger and destruction.
 

 

Forever Changes is an album that is as evocative and beguiling as it was in 1967.