The Psychedelic Sounds Of The 13th Floor Elevators (studio album) by 13th Floor Elevators

The 2nd is the best 👏🏻😎 The 1st is the worst 👎🏻

The first 4 songs are absolutely phenomenal and the group are just brimming with ideas on these tracks which make them such a joy to listen to. If the whole record maintained this quality then this album would be amongst the very best but all the tracks that follow let the music down. All their experimentation seems to dry up and we get a slow crawl to the finish instead of the huge psychedelic explosion the opening tracks make us think we are going to get. This makes the release feel very unsatisfying and has stopped me from revisiting it a few times. Overall, this is a unique and special release in the 60's as it attempted to push the genre to the limit and this leads to some incredible cuts on here but they just lack consistency on the whole.

If it would remain quality of first four tracks throughout the tracklist it would be one of the greatest albums of 1960s, it's still very influential, but sounds like they were losing ideas by the end of it.

From salahshoori 01/13/2022 07:36

One of the most underrated albums of all time. That's how GOOD it is!

Really solid album. "You're Gonna Miss Me" would be the choice cut on the album, but there is not bad track here. The production isn't that great, but for psychedelic garage music, it's suits the murkiness.

Listening to this album for the first time, I was startled by just how many psych rock and pop bands and even heavy rock groups that followed the release of this album copied the exact sound of this album, or at least borrowed significant elements from it. Goes to show how influential this thing was.

new to me. decent listen

You're Gonna Miss Me and Reverberation (Doubt) are great, the rest is a solid listen.

From 2nd-Impressions 10/13/2020 03:29

72/100

Best tracks: You're Gonna Miss Me, Roller Coaster, Kingdom of Heaven, Tried to Hide
Worst tracks: Don't Fall Down, Monkey Island

From TheDude85 08/13/2020 19:00

The version of the album I own and am reviewing here is a 2003 re-issue on the Fuel2000 record label that is distinctive from the original release. The 2003 re-issue includes the addition of 4 tracks all attributed as "Live". This 2003 re-issue features the following track listing:
1)You're Gonna Miss Me
2)Roller Coaster
3)Splash 1
4) Reverberation
5)Don't Fall Down
6)Fire Engine
7)Thru The Rhythm
8)You Don't Know (How Young You Are)
9)Kingdom Of Heaven
10)Monkey Island
11)Tried To Hide
12)Everybody Needs Somebody To Love (Live)
13)You Really Got Me (Live)
14)Gloria (Live)
15)You're Gonna Miss Me (Live)

Even more distinctive is the misspelling on the actual disc as "The PSYCHADELIC sounds of The 13th Floor Elevators". Again this disc was distributed in 2003 on the Fuel 2000 label 302 061 3202, and can be found on discogs.com Barcode: 0 302206 13202 1

Overall, the sound quality of the music on this disc is somewhat muted/distorted, yet one can gather some of the first evidence of a new style of music originating in the U.S. in 1966 - that of "Psychedelic" music.

From StefanR10 06/14/2020 19:26

Good album for me one of the best of Psychedelic Rock. Remember me of Sounds like Jefferson Airplane and the Doors. Nice to have it