The Sections

Personnel
Barry Gibb: Guitar, Vocal / Maurice Gibb: Keyboards, Bass, Vocal / Robin Gibb: Vocals / Colin Peterson: Drums / Vince Melouney: Guitar

The Songs
Close Another Door / Craise Finton Kirk Royal Academy of Arts / Cucumber Castle / Every Christian Lionhearted Man Will Show You / Holiday / I Can't See Nobody / Close My Eyes / In My Own Time / New York Mining Disaster 1941 / One Minute Woman / Please Read Me / Red Chair / Fade Away / To Love somebody / Turn of the Century

Notes
Although the Bee Gees were just teenagers fresh off the boat from Australia when they cut this, back home they'd already been TV and radio stars for years, and they already had a clear-cut musical agenda. Surprisingly, that formula isn't just British bubblegum a la Herman's Hermits or the Monkees, despite the nasal Peter Noone-like vocals and frequent lapses of taste - what they're really trying to do is rip off the Beatles' early 1967 psychedelic formula, right down to the booming Ringo-ey drums, zooming Macca-ey bass lines, light orchestration, harpsichords, mellotron, you name it. Even more surprisingly, it works: tracks like the druggy, Gregorian chant-infused "Every Christian Lion Hearted Man" sound almost like the real thing. Admittedly, a million other bands were running the same race, and only a few like the Kinks, Small Faces, and Zombies knew how to make a good record without being so damn derivative. But I'm impressed with the brothers' solid pop instincts - they wrote all the tunes and manage to make all of them sound different, at least from each other. A couple attempts are downright catchy, like the singles "Holiday" and "New York Mining Disaster 1941" - not to mention "To Love Somebody," a Top 40 hit like the other two and probably better remembered despite its corny arrangement, gratingly bombastic chorus, and mock-soul vocal.