Forever Changes

Although today Forever Changes is second only to Nick Drake's oeuvre as a hip name-check for sensitive indie rockers, the album disappeared upon its initial release. A lavishly orchestrated, predominantly acoustic LP that's downright rebellious in its unwillingness to rock, its surface prettiness masks the real reason why Forever Changes never clicked with the flowers-in-your-hair crowd: songs as nakedly apocalyptic as "A House Is Not A Motel" and "The Red Telephone" called BS on the sacred fairytale of the Summer of Love, sinking instead into flower power's dark undercurrents that soon enough would culminate in Altamont and Manson. In the increasingly desperate "Maybe The People Would Be The Times, or Between Clark And Hillsdale," singer-songwriter Arthur Lee staggers through crowds of oblivious Sunset Strip scenesters in fruitless search of genuine connection, and by the climax of the valedictory "You Set the Scene," he dismisses the entire hippie subculture with the memorable kiss-off "The things that I must do consist of more than style." In this context, even putative love songs like "Andmoreagain" and the flamenco-laced "Alone Again Or" strike notes of confusion and despair, and those lush arrangements often seem like the only thing keeping Forever Changes from sounding like the most paranoid, haunted, near-suicidal album ever made. Decades after the fact, much psychedelia sounds both naïve and dated, but the mixture of beauty and dread at the heart of Forever Changes still sounds remarkably timely.