The Zombies’ second album was routinely ignored upon its original release in 1968, its lukewarm reception leading to the band’s demise. However, the litmus test for any record is how well it ages and, like a fine malt liquor, Odessey and Oracle gets better with the passage of time. In fact, such is the album’s richly woven texture that each successive spin reveals new facets and only increases its charm. A special reissue that presents the mono mix for the first time on LP since the British pressing in 1968, there’s never been a better time to immerse yourself in a truly classic album.

Nine of Odessey and Oracle’s twelve tracks were recorded in Abbey Road’s Studio 3, where Pink Floyd had just finished recording The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and there was undoubtedly some magic still in the air when The Zombies started work in June, 1967. Self-financed and recorded intermittently, Odessey and Oracle has an urgency that many records of that era lack. That’s best exemplified by opening song ‘Care of Cell 44’, the lead single from the album, it’s bright, breezy and propelled forth by its own momentum and a kind of carefree abandon. While The Beatles had given up touring and taken up residency in the studio to create densely layered songs, ‘Care of Cell 44’ (as, indeed, the whole of Odessey and Oracle) still has the bones poking through the flesh, which is often a more intriguing proposition that records which are fat and bloated. This mono mix lets the listener get down into the nuts and bolts of the recording, without the sensory overload a stereo album can create. While you won’t find the music acting in new and strange ways, this release brings different nuances to the fore; the swing of ‘I Want Her, She Wants Me’ is now more pronounced and the stark nature of mono brings out the true horror of ‘Butcher’s Tale (Western Front 1914)’ in a way that the stereo mix obscured.

The whimsical, autumnal nature of Odessey and Oracle is quintessentially English, and while you can definitely hear the influence of American vocal groups on here (think The Beach Boys and The Mama and the Papas), yet they’re filtered through their own sensibilities so they become something original. You get the impression this is the album Pet Sounds would have been had Brian Wilson grown up beneath rainy St. Albans skies and not the sun kissed blue of California. While Odessey and Oracle isn’t a concept album per se, it certainly feels that way with the songs linked by themes of loss and longing, and hangs together collectively in much the same way as Something Else by the Kinks.

Praised by artists as diverse as Paul Weller and Mikael Åkerfeldt, Odessey and Oracle’s charm has aged like a fine wine, and this reissue taste’s mighty fine.

• Odessey and Oracle is released via Beechwood Park Records on 26th September 2025 (available here).
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Track List:

1. Care of Cell 44
2. A Rose for Emily
3. Maybe After He’s Gone
4. Beechwood Park
5. Brief Candles
6. Hung Up on a Dream
7. Changes
8. I Want Her, She Wants Me
9. This Will Be Our Year
10. Butcher’s Tale (Western Front 1914)
11. Friends of Mine
12. Time of the Season