Records of Epical Effect

If we're real music lovers, we've all known two sorts of positive listening experiences when it comes to recorded music. The more common one makes us come away with a sense that it was "good", "interesting", "entertaining", "well-played and well-sung", a "nice bunch of songs". The positive variant is something far rarer. I would simply call it an "epic" listening experience. With this latter kind, you find your mouth gaping, your scalp tingling and a sudden urge to get up and dance like a shaman. Few groups turn out records of such grandeur (or even want to), but there are some that manage to turn out not merely one but even more than one. Such groups are at the peak of their powers with high artistic aspirations and a desire to give their listeners a truly natural high. Epical popular music display compositions that create a sense of conceptual progress or the sense of a grand musical journey. They give a sweeping perspective of the gamut of human feeling yet possess a strong unity of meaning. Such albums employ a balanced orchestration of dynamics that shift from the subtle to the thrilling. They encompass a vast range of ideas that contribute to an astonishing wholeness. Their lyrics are exultant and/or profound in their propensity of insights or fascinating imagery and philosophical observations. Their musical themes are strong, sweeping and energetic, often forming a structure that develops in musical power as they recur like musical architecture in the record's musical cycle. The lyrics are often liberated both in meaning and delivery, and are unencumbered by petty concerns. Overall, the music often maintains an engaging balance of earthly richness through acoustic instrumentation and celestial reach through electric instrumentation, all of it played with virtuosity. The tapestry of ideas may be varied but the individual songs or sections contribute to a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Here are some of my personal favorite examples of albums which have enough of these elements to elicit a sense of epic-like reach in their depth and feeling: The Zombies: Odessey and Oracle [1968], The Moody Blues: In Search of the Lost Chord [1968], Love: Forever Changes [1968], The Beatles: The White Album [1968], The Kinks: Arthur, or The Rise and Fall of the British Empire [1969], Elton John: Tumbleweed Connection [1970], The Who: Who's Next [1971], Yes: The Yes Album [1971], Jethro Tull: Thick as a Brick [1972], David Bowie: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars [1972]. Queen: A Night at the Opera [1975].