The Zombies: Odessey & Oracle: 30th Anniversary Edition : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

In about 1965 an English group named the Zombies made two excellent hit singles: "She's Not There" and "Tell Her No." After that, they made a good album, several more fine singles (all of which flopped), and some songs for the flick Bunny Lake is Missing. Then they disappeared. Due to a lack of hit singles, Parrot Records didn't follow up their first album. They chose instead to concentrate on such chart-busters as Tom Jones and Them.

The Zombies are now back with a new album which they produced and arranged themselves. It is called Odessey and Oracle and is available in the United States on Date Records, a subsidiary of Columbia.

The group has changed somewhat over the years, and most of the changes are for the better. Others are the results of attempts at commerciality by musicians who are probably a bit bewildered by the lack of success awarded to music as outstanding as theirs.

Rod Argent's keyboard work and melodic writing coupled with Colin Blunstone's breathy vocals are still the Zombies' main strength. Chris White, the group's bassist, has given them a necessary shove into today's head by writing a couple of tunes with lyrics that are in a very nice, together place. For example, in "Friends of Mine," the lyric is simply about how good it is to know two people who are kind and who love each other. Behind the lyric the backup vocals repeat: "Kim and Maggie, June and Duffy, Gene and Jim and Jim and Christy ..." etc. Of course it's schlocky, but it also works.

Rod Argent's writing is at just about the same quality lyrically as it was on the first album (i.e. pretty good), although the subject matter is a bit broader than the boy-girl stuff which was the norm during the Early Beatle Period when Argent wrote the Zombies' hits. His "A Rose For Emily" has, I suppose, some reference to the Faulkner story. At least it is about an old lady's death. This song uses only Argent's piano and some occasional backup vocals to accompany Blunstone's singing. The chords are a bit reminiscent of McCartney's "For No One," but there's nothing wrong with that.

Another nice cut is "Beechwood Park," a Chris White composition which contains some fine work by Paul Atkinson, the group's lead guitarist. Atkinson seems to have outgrown the annoying post-Ventures style that he was into when he soloed on the first album. Now Atkinson's lines, like some of George Harrison's, sound as if they were composed by somebody who didn't know what a rock guitar line is "supposed" to sound like. This makes his melodic playing very interesting. Rhythmically, however, he still uses many of those dull "chank-chank" accent chords that he used on the first album.

The Zombies' rhythm section is adequate, but not outstanding. Hugh Grundy, the group's drummer, has improved since the first album, but only slightly. Of course, being English, he hasn't been exposed as much as we have to the new wave of "fatback" rhythms that are coming from James Brown et al. Nevertheless, White's rather sparse lyrical bass playing should leave Grundy open to make the group swing a bit more, even within the tightly structured, vocally oriented sound of the Zombies.

Odessey and Oracle starts and finishes with two Argent compositions which are direct descendents of the Zombies' earlier work. "Care of Cell 44" has one of Argent's fine melodic and chordal structures supporting that old "coming home" theme used on one of the Zombies' unsuccessful singles, and used by almost everybody just after "All My Loving" and "It Won't Be Long," Argent tries to update this theme by making this homecoming that of a girl about to leave prison.

"Time of the Season," the last cut on the album, has the same staggered beat as "She's Not There," except that the full drum set is replaced at short intervals with a handclap and an echo laden sigh. It is on this cut that Argent takes his only solo in that cookin', neojazz style so in evidence on the first album. However, the solo doesn't really get off until Argent's Hammond organ gets double-tracked toward the end of the tune. On the rest of the tracks Argent shows good judgment in respecting the complexity of the material and sticking to straight ahead Beatle-style comping and pre-written, well-integrated melodic lines.

The "modern" multi-tracking techniques used in the production have prevented Blunstone from getting into those spontaneous bluesy appoggiaturas which he used on the Zombies' first album, but his overall performance is as strong and as stylized as ever.

There are just two tunes on this album which annoyed me. One is "Hung up on a Dream," an Argent composition in which Blunstone's vocal is partially lost in a rather poor mix. The other is "Butcher's Tale," an anti-war song which uses a loud wheeze organ and tries too hard to be ugly.

When the Zombies err, it is usually an honest and forgivable mistake. Overall they have a very high level of musicianship and creativity. On this album they have handled the problems of added orchestration and elaborate production quite well while generally improving on their original sound, a sound which established them as one of England's very best rock groups.