A beginner's guide to art rock
Art Rock proper is many different things, but this guide only focuses on what it was in its golden age, from the late 1960s into the late 1970s. So this guide is not about psychedelia, it's not about New Wave or Post Punk and it's not about Alternative or Indie Rock. It's about the art rock that emerged out of psychedelia, as it's own thing, and was the inspiration for post punk.
For Starters
- Abbey Road (1969) by The Beatles
- The Doors (1967) by The Doors
- Strange Days (1967) by The Doors
- "Space Oddity" (1969) by David Bowie
- The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars (1972) by David Bowie
- Hunky Dory (1971) by David Bowie
Abbey Road (1969) The best place for an easy introduction to Art Rock is Abbey Road, the final album the Beatles recorded, the record their post-psychedelic sound properly coalesced into something coherent, and the point at which the studio innovations of psychedelia and avant rock are turned into extremely catchy pop rock where the average listener is not aware of the trickery and innovation. Abbey Road sounds like regular, mainstream pop music because this is the record that showed how slick pop rock and studio trickery could be combined seamlessly.
It's hard to imagine now, but the record is full of recently avant garde ideas, including the regular use of a Moog synthesizer, the swallowing of the coda of a song by a white noise machine, and the combination of a series of song-fragments into a suite, as well as the first ever "hidden track." And yet, nobody thinks of Abbey Road as avant garde or weird now. That's why it's the perfect introduction to art rock; it doesn't sound like art rock.
The Doors (1967) and Strange Days (1967) by The Doors Though often labeled "psychedelic" but critics and fans, The Doors were actually one of the first art rock bands to make music outside of the psychedelic spectrum. Whereas psychedelic bands were inspired by Indian music, modal and [free jazz] and musique concrete, The Doors were inspired by theatre (both musical theatre and normal theatre), the blues, poetry, Latin jazz and other things. Their music doesn't sound psychedelic because it's not. If it sounds psychedelic to you, that's due to decades of radio programmers lumping in The Doors with other bands of their era.
Their first two records are the records in which they created their own unique sound, which deviates significantly from psychedelia but, with the exception of their longest tracks, still sounds like the mainstream rock music of the day. They're a good introduction because, if you've ever listened to Classic Rock radio, you know some of these songs already, and the records warm you up with accessible but arty songs before concluding with the aggressively theatrical epic tracks which mark The Doors as among the founds of Art Rock proper.
