The Turtles - Happy Together (1967) [2017, 2CD Digipak Edition]

The Turtles' third original album (and their highest charting, peaking at #25) was also their most rewarding, filled with mostly first-rate songs beautifully executed. The hits singles "Happy Together" and "She'd Rather Be with Me" (both authored by Garry Bonner and Alan Gordon of the East Coast band the Magicians) helped propel the LP's sales, but there was a cornucopia of superb music surrounding them. Opening with "Makin' My Mind Up," driven by horns and a jangly folk-rock guitar, the album pulls the listener through the goofy Hollywood-spawned pop of "Guide for the Married Man" (co-written by John Williams, and a third single off the LP, but not a hit) and the gentle Kaylan/Volman-composed "Think I'll Run Away," one of the two prettiest tunes on this record. And that's just the first eight minutes the weirdly trippy "Walking Song" and the Bonner/Gordon "Me About You" (the latter also a great showcase for Chip Douglas' bass) also awaited listeners headed for "Happy Together." Side two is no less impressive, offering a piece of psychedelic pop authored by Carole King and Gerry Goffin, and the hauntingly beautiful "Like the Seasons," the B-side to "Happy Together," composed by a young Warren Zevon. The band saves its boldest satirical impulses for the finale, "Rugs of Woods and Flowers." Its easy, unforced, quietly clever take on psychedelic pop makes this one of the more deceptively beguiling records of its era as well as the best of the Turtles' original albums. And ironically, Happy Together was also a better showcase for Bonner and Gordon's music than their own band, the Magicians, ever gave them.