1000 Day Album Challenge (#60) The Zombies: Odessey & Oracle (1968) [29.02.24]
and I won’t forget the way you said / darling I love you / you gave me faith to go on…
Odessey and Oracle is an essential piece of sixties psychedelic pop that I didn’t discover until the 21st Century. sure I knew Time of the Season from when I was a kid. it was a Top Five single in the U.S. in 1969, a year after it had been released and after The Zombies had broken up. other than that I don’t think I knew a song on here before I listened to the album for the first time.
I’m not 100% certain how I was clued into Odessey and Oracle. I think it was Soul Strut, the amazing online record collecting forum that peaked in the early 2000s before being wiped out by the onslaught of social media as were so many other online music forums like DJ History. it was ranked #179 on the Soul Strut 200 which were their consensus essential records (https://www.soulstrut.com/Archive/the-zombies-odessey-and-oracle).
the song that really grabbed me was This Will be Our Year. I have a collection of songs in mind when I think of Pop Perfection. this is one of them. for me it’s right up there with the greatest pop moments of the sixties, along with God Only Knows (The Beach Boys) and Waterloo Sunset (The Kinks). there are plenty of others, but this is just to offer a sense of how beautiful This Will Be Out Year is.