EMI Int'l
1967
Mellow Yellow
About This Album
The second album of Donovan's psychedelic/rock phase (as distinct from his earlier folk phase), Mellow Yellow was always a mystery to British audiences (who never saw the LP, thanks to the nearly year-long lay-off that Donovan's legal woes imposed upon him in his own country), and a kind of vexation to American listeners, available as it was for many years in a wretched "rechanneled stereo" version from Columbia Special Products that offered scratchy sound and not much else. The CD version was a partial improvement, but was done so early that it wasn't even representative of state-of-the-art digital sound at the time it was issued, Columbia Records often being a day late and several dollars short in the audio sweepstakes of the mid- to late '80s. Now this CD, from British EMI, is state-of-the-art down to the last note, taken from the original master tape (in real stereo) and transferred in 24-bit digital, so that even the solo acoustic guitar on "Young Girl Blues" is kind of imposing, to the point where you can almost hear the action on the strings -- with Donovan's voice richer and more resonant than ever in this new transfer, and the arrangements by John Cameron and John Paul Jones now fully exposed and heard in all the timbres that were present in the studio; this is a sonic delight as well a spellbinding mix of psychedelia, blues, folk, Eastern music, and pop like nothing else that Columbia or any other major label -- except EMI and Capitol with the Beatles' Sgt.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,9 and 14)

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