In ages past, when spells were cast

Deep Purple - The Book of Taliesyn - 1968

Very shortly after the release of their debut album, Deep Purple were booked for a US tour that would start in October 1968. The American record label thought it would be a good idea to have a new album being released right before the tour started, so the band found themselves, one more, struggling to provide material for a full album.
Still, this one feels like a much better product than its predecessor. At least for the most part. The instrumental parts (and tracks) range from very good to brilliant, with "Wring your Neck" probably being my favourite here. As it would almost become trademark in DP, all the talent of each individual musician gets plenty of time to be showcased. Some of the tracks were maybe a bit too "classical" sounding, which shows a large predominance of Jon Lord both in composition and in arrangements, but listening to them play is quite a pleasure.
There's two big problems here, I think. One is the vocals. I'm not trying to say that Rod Evans was a bad singer, but he lacked much strength of feeling in his singing, and in more than one occasion, I felt as if he simply was making the wrong choices with respect to how to sing a song. Also the vocal arrangements of the backing vocals seemed a bit out of place, something that would be more at place at a more pop band.
The other problem is the covers. While "Kentucky Woman" is more lively than the original, it's not a brilliant cover. The Beatles's "We can Work it out" is quite bad, and it's a good example of Evans' bad choices on how to sing a song. Musically, it's brilliant, though. As for Ike & Tina Turner's "River Deep, Mountain High", I just can't get past how creepy Evans sounds singing "When you were a young girl did you have a ragdoll? / Now I'll love you just the way you loved that ragdoll". Seriously, it sounds scary.
Finally, there's the attempts at psychedelic topics in the lyrics and, sometimes, in the music. Doesn't feel like DP at all to me.

• "We can Work it out" starts with an introduction called "Exposition" that showcases fragments of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 and Tchaikovsky's Overture "Romeo and Juliet."
• Likewise, "River Deep, Mountain High" starts with notes from "Also Sprach Zarathustra", by Richard Strauss. They are the unforgettable notes that are used in Kubrik's 2001 film. 
• "Shield" makes a reference to "Lucy from above". I wonder if it refers to The Beatles' Lucy. It wouldn't surprise me. Everybody seemed to be wanting to reproduce something they did!
• "Anthem" sounds to me so much like a song written by Andrew Lloyd Webber, that I have no problem imagining Susan Boyle singing it. It has a beautiful guitar solo in the middle. This album has made me think "why doesn't the singer shut up" more than any other I can think of.

Nobody here gets out alive

The Doors - Waiting for the Sun - 1968

And here we have another band who found themselves in the situation of not having enough material for their next album. For the most part, they had made the first two by using songs that Jim Morrison had written beforehand, and struggled a bit to come up with songs for this one.

Maybe because of this, or maybe just because the first two albums had set the bar quite high, this one seems a bit disappointing in comparison. It's not a bad album, but has much more filler than any of the previous releases. 

Still, there are brilliant moments here, which include the lyricism of the simpler, "happier" songs, such as "Hello, I Love you", or "Love Street", or the sheer strength and anger of "Unknown Soldier" or "Five to One". 

And they managed to release three albums already without imitating The Beatles at all, which is already a great thing!

• Both "Five to One" and "Unknown Soldier" refer directly to war and military topics and not necessarily taking a stance against them. This is also an interesting sign on how the band seemed to be apart from the more "fashionable" topics. 
• At the end of "Not to Touch the Earth", we can hear Morrison deliver the famous line: "I am the Lizard King".
• "Spanish Caravan" has a beautiful introduction in acoustic guitar, which is a reworking of a piece by Albeniz.
• Ironically, the song "Waiting for the Sun" is not in this album, and would only be released in 1970.

Timothy Leary's dead

The Moody Blues - In Search for the Lost Chord - 1968

And no, he wasn't dead then (he died in 1995 or so). For those who don't know who Leary was, he was a psychiatrist that, during the 1960s, encouraged the use of hallucinogenics as a way of expanding our minds. He was quite influential in the social and political life of the times, was involved with the more radical groups, like the black panthers, and the main reason I'm talking about him is because he's far more interesting than this album.

I didn't like their previous one. This one is worse. It's way more pretentious, but it even lacks the musical complexity they achieved before. At their simplest, they actually remind me of Uruguayan band The Shakers, I talked about one of their albums a few weeks ago. At their more complex, they try so clearly to do a Sgt. Pepper's that it's painful. 

• The referred to "lost chord" is "Om". Yes, the hindu mantra. 
• I might be overly critical of them here. I guess I had a much higher concept of the band, and haven't heard anything by them in such a long time that probably I'm more than anything annoyed at myself for misremembering. At any rate, the video here is priceless, if only for how bizarre it is. It needs more of the dancing dude!