Terry Melcher - S/T CD (Collectors Choice)

On this 1974 debut, the Byrds/Raiders producer spins his own web as a Beverly Hills country boy, soothed by strings, loping cadences and harmonies (including those of mom Doris Day), racked by the existential anxieties that fill Joan Didion’s west coast tomes. The darkness might be read as post-Manson stress (Melcher’s house on Cielo was the first creepycrawl target), or just post-paradise anomie. Either way, it’s a tense and provocative mix, and an interesting oddity to be filed between the Burritos and Jimmy Webb.