Forever Changes [Vinyl LP]

One of the first pop albums to become a cult classic, Love's 1967 masterpiece, FOREVER CHANGES, is the pinnacle of the L.A. freak (the locals' preferred term over "hippie") scene. Singer/songwriter Arthur Lee's lyrics are increasingly fragmentary and paranoid, foreshadowing the band's eventual drug-fueled collapse. Yet these drop-dead hip tunes are set in arrangements featuring Herb Alpert-style mariachi horns, lush middle-of-the-road strings, and other tropes of the easy listening scene, creating a more unsettling sense of tension than if the songs were given the usual heavy rock instrumentation. Every single track is a stone classic, although second songwriter Bryan MacLean's contributions, the haunted "Old Man" and especially the simply gorgeous opener "Alone Again Or," deserve special consideration. FOREVER CHANGES belongs high on any halfway serious list of the greatest pop albums of the '60s.