jingle jangle mornings, eight

I'd forgotten what a strange album Roots is.  It's quite good, but definitely weird. Released in 1968, it taps into the emergent country rock trend, but this is done in a kind of homage to the brothers' early country roots. And yet, even as it looks back to past glories with a note of wistful nostalgia for simpler times, the record is itself a concept album, replete with all kind of old radio broadcasts and montages of the early days of the Everly family, so the artistic pretensions endemic to so much of the music of the late 60s creep in even to this, the most unpretentious of all musical acts.  It just goes to show that nobody was immune to artistic self-importance at the time. ...None of this diminishes from the pleasure of hearing the record.  The Everlys may have unwittingly fallen prey to the more general conceptual mushiness in the air, but their harmonies on Roots are still unlike anything I've ever heard.  The sound of their voices soothes me like a pleasingly cool breeze...