Anthony Fantano: Hi everyone, Anthony Fantano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. Hope you're doing well. And it's been a minute; it's been a while, but we are back with another starter pack. We are going to do another collection of recommendations in a particular genre that we feel like you should be listening to if you're trying to dip your toes into this sound, into a style, and today we have chosen Psychedelic Pop. Psychedelic, not rock. Though rock is definitely an influence and an element of nearly all of these albums, we kind of primarily focused on Psychedelic but kept it a little poppy. So yeah, we're going to go over a handful of records that we feel like you should check out. And let's get started without any further ado.

The first record we are going to do is from Giggins over here, dropped in 1967, and is from The Cyrkle. And yeah, this is their album, Neon, which I'm not familiar with. So what made you go with this record? Not only in terms of its quality, but just as an introduction to the style. What do you feel like it's bringing to you in the way it sort of defines this genre?

Giggens: The Cyrkle for me is a great gateway entry point to Psychedelic Pop because they're not necessarily far out, but they're not necessarily just straightforward bubblegum. So it would start off with The Cyrkle. They were kind of founded under a different name by Brian Epstein of The Beatles. John Lennon gave them their spelling of the name Circle. They ended up touring with The Beatles for like 18 days. They did a lot of work with them. So they were on the trajectory for greatness, but they only put out two albums and one soundtrack. I like these guys because they had two massive hits with "Red Rubber Ball" and "Turn Down-Day," which a lot of people just know those songs are played on the radio to this day. But they got so much more adventurous with Neon because they were playing with textures like lyrically, loneliness, excitement, looking out for yourself, looking out for others. This album is so much more in depth than it was on their first record. And sound-wise, I would say, and we've talked about this before, like psychedelic music started because it was influenced by psychedelics. You were on these drugs.

And then I feel like the music became more influenced by the music made by those musicians. So it became sort of a genre within itself. But this album is experimental in the fact that the textures they play with and the chord combinations are way different than most common pop songs of that time. And I feel like they send you places, which is what good psychedelic music should do. It should take you somewhere else. So there are songs about being lonely on this album. This song's about going out and celebrating life. There's some great covers; their cover of "I'm Happy Just to Dance With You" by The Beatles is fantastic. They make it their own completely, but they also incorporate a lot of the elements of psychedelic music from that time. Like, sitar is all over this album, but it's so beautifully used. It doesn't sound cheesy or corny. And a bunch of these guys have gone on to write jingles for the rest of their lives, having really big careers doing that.

But yeah, this album, the harmonies are amazing. The song constructions are great. So many catchy hooks; it'll live with you. It's like dipping your toes in the water, but not being too like, headfirst into psychedelics. But yeah, this record is just, it's fantastic. I can't get enough of this thing.

Yeah, neither of us, just as a spoiler, like chose a Beatles album for this list, but like their influence is so massive and unignorable that even in some of the other A-tier or even B-tier, introductory recommendations that you can make. You can't really talk about it without talking about the impact of Revolver, the impact of Sgt. Pepper's because those records just defined the era and defined the genre, so powerfully, and so significantly.

Yeah. And it's so easy to go down that rabbit hole. I wanted to pick albums that weren't expected. I could have easily said The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Disraeli Gears, but like, we know those albums.

Right. We know, we know those albums. So it's like, that's kind of the trick. It's like, these are records that I feel like you should just know as a general music fan. And they're so, I guess, widely accepted and understood that I feel like there's almost a lack of appreciation for their context. Like sometimes these records, I don't feel like, are necessarily appreciated for the ideas and the sounds that they kind of, like, got the ball rolling on. Or kind of like, the psychedelic era that they were products of, because their sounds and aesthetics have been so normalized that people just kind of like, oh, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, that's rock. Without thinking of kind of like, the little kind of genre tags or kind of stylistic nuances that you should be adding to that conversation? So next in the list is a pick that I had, and I went with a newer one. In fact, a lot of the records I grab are on the newer side, but Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots.

That's an incredible record.

Incredible record. And again, an album that in a lot of ways is poppy, is super palatable, is super approachable, and also heavily influenced by the music of the original psychedelic era. I'm not going to get into the whole backstory of the Flaming Lips, especially since, like, we'd be here for a minute with respect to this album because this is, like, I think their 10th album at this point. This is like considered one of the biggest pinnacles in their career, and they're like about a dozen albums, or significant projects, into their career by this point. So, never let anybody tell you that you're starting too late with anything. You could, you could start at any time and sort of be 10 or so albums deep into your career and then have like one of your biggest records ever. And look, there are a lot of ways to skin a cat when it comes to making psychedelic music, when it comes to working with aesthetics.

I mean, records like Revolver and like Sgt. Pepper's, like part of what is so significant and interesting about those albums is that they're almost an example also of the studio as an instrument. And a lot of the biggest defining studio effects and the bits of aesthetic kind of sonic trickery that we have to play with today is like, these are baseline effects, your distortions, your delays, your echoes, da, da, da, da, da, like those were being not fully pioneered, but kind of like, perfected in a way that would become kind of like the gold standard, as far as like, studio engineering during that time period and the way Flaming Lips sort of like, employ a lot of those effects, harkens back to that time period and harkens back to that era, but they add a lot of, modern bits into the mix, they're sort of like pulling from those grandiose orchestral theatrical kind of musical compositional ideas that you get from a Sgt. Pepper's, but then also they're throwing drum machines in there, and they're throwing loops in there, and they're throwing synths and electronics in there, and it's getting like a little more zany and a little more goofy.

It's grandiose, but also, like a lot of the best Psychedelic records from the time period, it's also kind of playful, and also kind of like some of the storytelling that happens on a few of the tracks as well is really interesting. It's, it's all about kind of the surrealism. It's all about imagination. It's all about different sorts of, like, instrumental imaginations, narrative imaginations. It's just a very creative, colorful record and essentially kind of takes those psychedelic pop, those classic psychedelic pop tropes, but kind of elevates them to another level. And in just a very modernist way that, despite the fact that the record is over 20 years old now, it still doesn't sound old.

Like there are psychedelic artists who made records 10 years down the road, be it Tame Impala or whatever, who even their records, be it occurrence or whatnot, still don't sound as fresh as this album. Like this album, by comparison, sounds weirder. Currents is good. There's nothing wrong with Currents. Like there's going to be some Currents enjoyers in chat, whatever. Not to hate on Currents, but like, there's, there's a lot of psychedelic modern psychedelic records today that still don't sound as weird or as cutting-edge or as challenging. But also as fun as what the Lips were doing on this record. So, as far as a poppy psychedelic record, but still has an element of grandiosity to it. And it's a little over the top and theatrical. This would be my recommendation for sure.

Now, with one of the biggest albums in psychedelic music that is often mentioned again and again when it comes to the big classic albums in the genre, pop or otherwise, but that would be this Zombies album, Odessey and Oracle that you chose. But still, this is probably our biggest-ticket, obvious recommendation on the list. But as you just said, we're like trying not to recommend a Beatles album, but still, this is like a pretty big one when it comes to psychedelic music. Why did you choose it? And what about it do you think makes it kind of define this style?

And for as big as it is, I feel like it's still not as well known.

Right, it could be talked about more. It's still not talked about to the degree that, like, Revolver is.

Absolutely. It's getting more recognition these days, I would say. But especially for the first probably 30 or 40 years of its life, it just didn't have that crowd. Like it was one of those, if you know, you know records.

Yeah, I feel like it's an album that you are maybe more aware of if you're just like on that next level of psych devotee. If You're not just listening to psychedelic bands by virtue of, like, oh, I'm just into 60s music; I'm just into classic rock. No, I'm actually into psychedelic music. Yeah. I'm getting into Os Mutantes. I'm getting into 13th Floor Elevators, and I'm also getting into Zombies.

And we could have talked about all those bands too. Right. Damn good albums. The Zombies, for me, they're one of my favorite groups. And they were, I've always said that they were too smart for the record-buying public. They were too smart for their own good because they incorporated so much. Jazz and blues and R&B and rock into this fusion that just, it didn't sell well. Put it that way. Two big singles: "She's Not There" and Tell Her No" sold close to nothing in their own home country of England. They did well everywhere else. And they never made money.

So by the time they made Odessey and Oracle, they were like, you know what? Screw it. Let's make an album that we're going to enjoy for ourselves. They used their own money, got to the studio, banged out this album they loved, and no one bought it. It went nowhere, did nothing. They broke up. That was it. And then a few months later, about a year later, "Time of the Season" came out as a single, and their record label was like, "Hey, this song's number one now - could you guys go back and make an album for us?" Because now we want you again. And two of the guys got back together. New songs, old songs. The label said, " No, we don't want it now." Some group in America went out as the Zombies to tour for "Time of the Season," featuring a very young Dusty Hill from ZZ Top as an imposter Zombies. That's a whole other story.

This is insane. This is like really getting put through. Through the ringer.

It goes down the rabbit hole. But Odessey and Oracle, for me, is an album that shows a band that doesn't care anymore about what the reception might be. They want to make good music for themselves. And it does go places. There are definitely elements of like the earlier popular stuff, but there's really weird stuff on here, too. There's like baroque pop, and there's just piano ballads. There's a song about World War One. There's a song about leaving jail and reacquainting yourself with the person you were with beforehand. The song about the summer of love.

There are a lot of elements on this album that take you somewhere else, which, as I said before, for me, that's psychedelic music. I want to go somewhere else. But the harmonies on this album are unbelievable. The musicianship, they were all in top form on this thing, all at the top of their game. But there are some huge hits on here. Like everyone knows, "This Will Be Our Year," I think that's become a modern classic. I'd say in the last 10 years or so, beyond "Time of the Season," that's definitely the one people talk about now.

The cultural impact this album has had is unbelievable. I would say every band in the E6 Collective in the 90s grew up on this album. This is one of those records where if you know a "Magical Mystery Tour" on Sgt. Pepper, you're like, what else came out in that era? Then you see this groovy, far-out cover where Odyssey is spelled wrong. Terry Quick, the artist, spelled it wrong, and it just stuck.

This album is one of those magical records that you don't forget. It's one of those things you sit down with, and you don't want to turn it off the whole way through. There's so much experimentation and so much open-mindedness on this record. It's hard to deny its impact on what came next, but that's how good albums go sometimes. You make them, no one hears them, and it takes a next generation to appreciate what's happening because the world changed and now it's ready for that record. So yeah, give anything by The Zombies a try, but Odessey and Oracle is a record you absolutely need to hear.

Yeah, a record like this, again, in the context of what we're kind of saying with Psychedelic Pop, it's just so interesting to look at records like this as, to me, those two words together, they work. We sort of have an understanding of music, as music fans, of what Psychedelic Pop is, but also, those ideas feel in a lot of ways so at war with each other because pop music in so many ways is about adhering to a formula and conformity and sort of giving the audience a certain level of expectations with how the songwriting is, going and melody and harmony and so on and so forth. But the whole sort of linchpin of psychedelic music is experimentation and surrealism and trying to subvert expectations and sort of give people a sound palette and something that goes beyond what their normal conceptions of music would be.

Exactly.

I just find it interesting that these artists came out with so many classic and interesting albums that somehow found a way to balance those two things because, in a lot of ways, they do sort of adhere to pop norms but also have these kind of strange experimental qualities about what they're doing and just trying to find ways to balance that 50-50, and it sort of we think it works. Obviously, it didn't sell well during the time. But I feel like that's also kind of the downside with some of these albums, being weird and unpredictable and ahead of the curve, like that sometimes puts your audience in a position where they don't really know what to make of some of these albums when they first hear them. I think that's, yeah, that's also the case for this next album, though. I mean, you could say people kind of came around to it in a much shorter period of time than that Zombies record, but I also picked MGMT's Congratulations.

Oh, good choice.

Thankfully, they sort of were still a band by the time people started to enjoy this record. And stayed a band and continued being a band. But yeah, as the MGMT story famously goes, they came out with their debut, which was a massive debut. It has huge songs on it, and undeniably psychedelic qualities to it. But still, the boys felt like the biggest hits off of that record were flukes and were just kind of fooling around and ultimately not where they wanted to be stylistically and creatively as a duo. And so they decided to basically throw out what could have been maybe one of the most massive up-and-coming runs in pop music if they just came out with Oracular Spectacular 2.

It would have blown up.

It would have been huge with the Normies. It would have been all over the place. The hits off that album still get played today. You know? But instead, they decided to come out with Congratulations, which is by no means the weirdest psychedelic album out there. In fact, I would say it's still more of a pop album than it is a straight-up experimental record. There are a few very long songs in the mix where they sort of push the envelope in a really cool sort of explorative way. But most of the songs on there are very approachable and are very catchy and sometimes even very goofy. One of my favorite tracks on there is "Brian Eno," which is their whole little silly, almost slightly surf-rocky ode to Brian Eno, kind of goofing at the idea that yeah, he's always one step ahead of us. He's Brian Eno.

It sounds like the cover looks.

Yeah. Kind of almost painting him like he's a superhero of music or something, or whatever. So there's a lot of fun, silly, approachable songs on there, and like the Flaming Lips record and like, even Revolver, which famously had "Yellow Submarine" on it. There's a lot of tracks on there that are just very silly and tongue-in-cheek and playful. But simultaneously, these grandiose moments, too, that kind of contrast that. But yeah, despite the fact that I am kind of downplaying some of the weirder elements of this record, I'm sort of doing that to sort of say the album, while not the strangest, was weird enough to make a lot of people, even a lot of snooty indie fans, sort of look at the album like, what are we doing with this?

It was a head-scratcher at the time.

Yeah. Which, again, I enjoyed it at the time when it came out. Y'all can check the record. Y'all can look up the review. But I thought it was pretty good. I loved the title track. The title track is one of their coolest ballads ever, in my opinion. Very fun, well-put-together song. There's a lot of well-put-together songs on this record. And again, another album that kind of perfectly balances pop accessibility with weird washes of reverb and strange kind of almost eerie, deadpan-ish vocal deliveries here and there. Super lush, surreal instrumentation. And again, some silly kind of song ideas that are kind of playful, and hokey and a little schmaltzy here and there, too. It's a fun album! But again, another record that, with it being kind of a weirdo's pop exploration, wasn't fully appreciated when it originally came out. I would say it took maybe about a little less than 10 years for people to kind of finally start being like, actually, this is pretty sick.

Yeah. Debut albums are tough because you set the groundwork for what's supposed to come next, quote-unquote. Right. So when you change expectations, Pinkerton's a great example of that one.

No, for sure. All right. Next, we're going to go back to you for another recommendation here, and that is going to be this: The Millennium album, also a late 60s release, Begin, also one that I'm unfamiliar with. Why did you go with this one?

I think you would love this one, honestly. This is The Millennium, a project of a guy called Curt Boettcher. There are eight ways to spell his last name, so good luck finding him online. He's a mysterious guy. He worked with a lot of bands, from The Association to The Birds, Paul Rear and the Raiders, and The Beach Boys. He was a producer, songwriter, and arranger. And kind of a mystery. And not much is known about him. Whenever I meet people that knew him back in the day, it's cool to hear stories about this guy.

But this album was the only album The Millennium ever put out. And it's a really special record because this guy was so tuned in to what was going on to not to make things expected. He, again, plays with really cool acoustic textures. Amazing, soaring harmony vocals. You guys know I like harmonies, so I'm a sucker for that stuff. But insanely catchy songs that, again, go somewhere else.

But the whole album for me is left turns. There are weird honking sounds. There's lots of shaker percussion. There's really dry vocals, really well-produced, reverb-y vocals. So he's going all over the place. And at the time, it was one of the most expensive records ever made by Columbia. It was like over $100,000 to make this album.

Wow.

And no one bought it. It completely disappeared. It's gone without a trace. It got reissued by Sundays back in the day on CD and record. But this album, for me, if you guys know the band Sagittarius, Kurt was in that band with Gary Usher, the producer. They did "My World Fell Down," which was a huge song. But that band didn't exist. It was just those two guys. And the record label was like, you should go tour. And they were like, we can't. We're not a band.

And he did it again with the Millennium, taking pieces of other people, taking people from other bands he was in. And pieces of work he had done through other bands as well to make this record. But it's so intricate. It's so complicated. It's so sunshiny. It's so baroque. And it's so far out. But he combines all those feelings with a really comfy blanket approach. So it feels warm and welcoming. But it's definitely kind of strange.

But great songs about what the world is like at 5 a. m. Great songs about writing letters to friends. Definitely a record if you're looking for lost 60s classics. Millennium is a record I tell people about all the time because it doesn't get much more obscure than this. And again, good luck finding information about Curt Boettcher because I've looked for years and there isn't much out there. So kind of an enigma of a guy. But yeah, dig the Millennium. Absolutely.

Or finding an OG physical copy.

Good luck with that. Yeah. I have a CD. I don't have the record of it at all. So yeah, I love that album.

All right. Last one that I want to get a recommendation in for, which you kind of alluded to earlier, but the Elephant 6 Collective, a 90s Atlanta-based music collective and label, lots of musicians, lots of bands to get into. This album is not only, in my opinion, a great example of psychedelic pop, but also just a good gateway album to the Elephant 6 Collective in general. The band featured a few of the collective's founders. Bill Doss and Will Cullen Hart, among others.

And you guys, I'm sure, are already aware of some of the bands that have sort of gone down in music internet infamy that have ties to this scene, be it either Neutral Milk Hotel or Apples in Stereo or Of Montreal and so on and so forth. But for a lot of fans, The Olivia Tremor Control and this debut Dusk at Cubist Castle is like, really where a lot of it starts.

And it is really a great place to start in terms of introducing yourself to the rest of the catalog and just kind of the general aesthetics of the label and what the collective is sort of known for. And while, yeah, you could argue that some tracks on this record and the album itself are not the poppiest because there are some lengthy bits on there and the album itself is over an hour long, and you have that whole series of typewriter tracks in the midst of the whole thing, which, if you're looking for a nice, easy poppy listen, I'm sure that's going to leave your head scratching.

But you know, kind of the whole idea of a lot of the Elephant 6 Collective Music was kind of borrowing back because you have to think this is like the nineties, and it started with all of these young underground musicians who just have this undying love and enjoyment during the days of grunge and alt rock and alt metal and the dance pop of the era and everything going on in nineties hip hop at the time. But these guys, with all that going on, were just into psychedelic music from the sixties.

I remember seeing an interview with one of the guys from Montreal one time, and they were convinced that music died in like 1976.

It's like, they were just fans of that era of music, and simultaneously, their approach to doing it was different, though. It wasn't just merely kind of like, purely an exercise in nostalgia because they're kind of like experimental influences, and the fact that a lot of this stuff is being self-recorded and kind of like a lo-fi fashion in an underground kind of like indie way, led them to places creatively and aesthetically where they have total creative control of everything and are also willing to not be so kind of obsessive over kind of making it sound like pristine studio quality, that kind of thing.

I mean, with music technology, music recording technology at the time, if you were actually kind of like paying attention to some of those old-school aesthetics, you could get like a decent 60s-sounding album; it wasn't going to sound like Nirvana, Butch Vig quality, but it was going to sound like it was passable enough to sound kind of like, goofy, weird sound effects going on, "Yellow Submarine" kind of quality? So as a result of that, you have all of these, like, even weirder and more kind of like experimental textures and sound effects kind of flowing throughout these tracks. And of course, with this album calling so heavily back to The Beatles, you have those classic chord progressions and vocal harmonies and super theatrical bits as well.

So the Olivia Tremor Control kind of have it all in terms of classic sixties psychedelic pop, but it just sounds a little weird. Weirder and a little more out there and just like a little more unkempt and lo-fi and all over the place.

I completely agree. And as you said before, the limitations of what they had access to made the creativity soar.

Yeah. It's sort of like the, the DIY element to it is sort of like what made this record and just kind of E6 in general, special.

So much talent in that group.

No, for sure. Correct. And obviously again, like down the road, you did. I have some artists in the collective, be it either Apples in Stereo or Of Montreal, that did go on to make, like, slicker studio records, and you know, Of Montreal had some pretty huge career highs where they were doing more electro pop and stuff like that.

But when you look at all of these groups at their core, a lot of their earliest records, they were all doing this kind of, like, sixties psychedelic, sort of DIY kind of sound. Then sometimes it had more of a rock influence. Sometimes it had more of a folk influence. Sometimes it had other stuff going on in there as well. Some of those baseline elements, it really kind of depends on which band it was, but you know, The Olivia Tremor Control in this record kind of like was the big intro and kind of incorporated a little bit of everything. It was like a real kind of range of everything that the collective could do, in a way.

Definitely one of those E6 albums not to miss. Set the blueprint pretty high.

But yeah, those are the six albums that we want to throw at you guys that we think are poppy, that we think are psychedelic, and we think are worth your time.

Pretty groovy stuff, man.