2. Wild Mountain Thyme
3. Mr Spaceman
4. I See You
5. What's Happening?!?!
6. I Come And Stand At Every Door
7. Eight Miles High
8. Hey Joe (Where You Gonna Go)
9. Captain Soul
10. John Riley
11. 242 Foxtrot (The Lear Jet Song)
In which the Byrds finally enter the exciting world of psychedelia. Except only slightly, really. It's more like they're dipping their feet in. Fortunately, this resulted in one of the true psych classics, 'Eight Miles High'. With its weirdo-12 string guitar solos (apparently an attempt to emulate Ravi Shankar, as well as John Coltrane), fuzzed up bass and ethereal harmonies, this song was nothing short of a sensation. Except it didn't make quite as big a splash as it should've, mostly due to the fact that everyone thought it was about drugs.
Unfortunately, after the recording of that song, Gene Clark, the band's main songwriter up to that point, left the group. The other Byrds then had to record the rest of this album without him, and the result is an album with 4 covers and an instrumental. It's not as bad as you might think, though!
The general Byrds sound is still around, with the harmonies and the endless jangling, particularly on the almost-hits '5D (Fifth Dimension)' and the quirky 'Mr. Spaceman', which sounds like a precursor to their later country-rock direction. However, they change up their sound a bit on this record, adding strings to a couple of songs, and even the sound of a jet plane on '2-4-2 Foxtrot', which is the weird awkward cousin amongst the dysfunctional family of this album.
Not all of the songs are successful, though. Their version of 'Hey Joe' isn't exactly gonna make people stop listening to the Jimi Hendrix version, and 'Captain Soul' is nothing to write home about.
Overall, this album is good, but flawed. A bold step forward for the Byrds, but not a step fully made. 7.5/10
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