Cosmic Rough Riders Panorama Black Vinyl Edition

Light-as-air vintage Byrds harmonies bloom throughout, particularly on songs such as "Have You Heard the News Today?" and "The Pain Inside," as do chiming guitars straight out of Mr. Tambourine Man, while Jayhawks harmonies buoy the wonderful country ballad "Afterglow." But gone for the most part are the overt country-rock inflections and in their place are even more resonant touches of rural psychedelia and a sound dense with strummed acoustic guitars and tangibly cosmic undertones. For instance, the brief mystical blast of "Brothers Gather 'Round" wrenches Brian Jones' sitar-like tones out of an acoustic guitar, while the guitars on "Can't Get Any Closer" could have walked out of Aftermath. But "The Gun Isn't Loaded" is the most convincing exposition of the band's huge growth between albums. The melody is a grafting of Middle Eastern modality and the echoes of traditional Celtic folk (while managing to also sound like XTC), and the mood falls somewhere between "Norwegian Wood" and "Tomorrow Never Knows," Indian music and psychedelic folk-rock.