(Somewhere one of the Decemberists is eating his or her heart out.) The Bee Gees were still a solid six years away from their notorious disco period (in ’69, the Gibb brothers were all barely in their 20s), and here they found themselves somewhere beyond the lively pull of the exquisite psychedelia of their earlier records and into something weighted with sobering self-importance. Odessa feels like a concept album - even if it lacks a true conceptual narrative at its core - most likely because it begins with a seven-minute epic about the “British ship Veronica” lost in the Baltic Sea, a theme later picked up by cinematic instrumentals like “Seven Seas Symphony”, and because it is long as hell. In 1969, after releasing three psych-pop albums in little more than a year’s time (the best of which, Bee Gees’ 1st, is like Revolver at a tea party: awesome), the Bee Gees went whole hog into melodramatic chamber rock with Odessa, a 17-track double album steeped in gaudy melody and lush orchestration.
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