MARGO GURYAN ‘Take A Picture’ reissue

$22.00 Inc GST

Available on backorder

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Description

Jazz-trained Margo Guryan released Take a Picture in 1968 after about a decade of songwriting – with credits including Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry and Harry Belafonte, among others. The Pet Sounds acolyte’s lone full-length is an early prototype for countless lounge and dream-pop excursions, and bridges the gap between Burt Bacharach and Belle & Sebastian. The hazy production is loaded with horns, strings and sumptuous harmonies; standout “Sunday Morning” became a Bobbie Gentry and Glen Campbell duet. The album received critical praise, but Guryan had no aspirations to tour. “I didn’t want to be a performer,” she said in a 2011 interview. “I wanted to be a songwriter… You needed a manager, an agent, a lawyer, an accountant … people telling you what to wear, what to say, who to be. The whole thing just didn’t appeal to me.”

Some of rock’s greatest stories are short ones. After making one, solitary studio full-length, some acts were promptly derailed by death, internal band politics or the simple desire to put something down and never pick it back up. This reissue rates as one of the Top 40 of the best one-and-dones according to ROLLING STONE Magazine.