Albums similar to middle Beatles era, Pet Sounds and/or Odessey & Oracle

Stained Glass
Crazy Horse Roads (1969)

Pop-rock trio Stained Glass formed in 1966, a product of the same San Jose, CA music scene that also produced the legendary Syndicate of Sound, the E Types, and the Count Five. Bassist/songwriter Jim McPherson, guitarist Bob Rominger, and drummer Dennis Carrasco quickly evolved from Beatles covers to writing original material, even though upon signing to RCA, their debut single was headlined by the Fab Four cover "If I Needed Someone." The self-penned gem "My Buddy Sin" closed out the year, and in the spring of 1967 Stained Glass scored a major local hit with "We Got a Long Way to Go." "A Scene in Between" soon followed, but the group again proved unable to dent the national charts, and RCA terminated their contract. Stained Glass signed to Capitol, issuing "Lady in Lace/Soap and Turkey" in mid-1968. Early the following year, they issued their first full-length effort, Crazy Horse Roads. Rominger soon exited, and with the addition of new guitarist Tom Bryant they released Aurora but when both albums were ignored by record buyers, the trio dissolved in November 1969. McPherson later resurfaced in Copperhead

Wondermints
Wondermints (1995)

AMG review :

"Throughout the early '90s, the Wondermints recorded a bevy of exceptional homemade demos and small indie singles primarily in co-founder Darian Sahanaja's bedroom studio. Slowly but surely that music circulated through the Los Angeles underground music scene on a series of semi-legendary tapes identified solely by their colors. The band's music, however, still flew under the radar of the music business until the Japanese label Toy's Factory picked up the slack, releasing an eponymous debut in 1995 that cherry-picked the very best songs from those original tapes. It is hard to imagine a more auspicious and stunning debut of pop/rock accomplishment than Wondermints (which was picked up for domestic release by Big Deal a year later). Some critics even ranked the album alongside such landmarks as Pet Sounds and Rubber Soul, and while that may be stretching it just the slightest bit, it is certainly not much of an exaggeration. It is, in fact, one of the finest rock albums to see release in the entire decade, yet for some reason it didn't make the band a household name, at least inside American borders and outside insular pop circles. The album is primarily the baby of Sahanaja and co-founder Nick Walusko, who wrote all the songs between them, and it proved that their talent arrived fully formed, although the band does betray its roots more so than it would on future recordings, especially through the album's first half. They owe a huge debt to Brian Wilson, both in song construction and melodies as well as in the production on the bulk of the songs. It is difficult to imagine anything more majestically baroque or ethereally beautiful than "Tracy Hide," for instance, unless it is "God Only Knows." It's no wonder that Wilson, upon hearing the album, ecstatically claimed that he would have taken Smile on the road had the Wondermints been around in 1967. They owe nearly as much to the ragged soulfulness of Brother Records-era Beach Boys, not to mention minor nods to perennials such as the Left Banke and Phil Spector. The sunfried ambience of '70s power pop and classic FM rock -- Cheap Trick, the Raspberries (Eric Carmen was another early fan and backer), Todd Rundgren, et al. -- holds an equally powerful sway over their sound. The playing is effortlessly laid-back and breezy without losing its tight focus or crunch. On "Shine," they try on the Middle Eastern rhythms and the type of mystical melody that would resurface on Bali a couple years later, tying it off with a hook that equals the Beatles' finest B-side, "Rain." What the album comes down to, however, is not the references from which it was constructed, but rather how amazingly fresh and dynamic it manages to sound even while sonically name-checking those artists. It is state-of-the-art '90s pop/rock, at once reverential and ambitious. And it only grows more inventive as it goes, hitting its most original (not to mention psychedelic and spacy) peak during the second half of the album on remarkable songs like "Global Village Idiot" and "Playtex Aviary." It is a rare first attempt on which the band's reach and grasp are virtually identical."

The Gordian Knot (1968)

AMG review :

"Gordian Knot was a short-lived band from southern California, by way of Mississippi. They released only one album, a terrific soft rock/harmony pop effort produced by Clark Burroughs of the Hi-Los. Original pressings are considered highly collectible and valuable. The group formed at the University of Mississippi and was led by ex-Mississippi all-American quarterback/guitarist/lead vocalist Jim Weatherly, a native of Pontotoc, MI. The group caught their biggest break after they appeared at a party thrown by Nancy Sinatra, who apparently liked them so much that she asked them to accompany her on a USO trip to Vietnam. According to their liner notes, they were "one of the few groups since the Beatles to possess genuine charm...not a phony showbiz glucose charm, but the real thing." The bulk of the songs for their album were written by Weatherly, and have a edgier, husky country-rock vibe compared with those written by Leland Russell, whose beautiful tunes are comparatively similar to the Association (Burroughs, it should be pointed out, was also a vocal arranger on the Association's Insight Out and Waterbeds in Trinidad! albums). "One Way Street" is the band's lone obligatory jug band entry. The band also appeared as themselves in a 1968 MGM teensploitation flick called Young Runaways, performing an original entitled "Ophelia's Dream." A few years after the release of this album, Weatherly moved to Nashville and became a country singer/songwriter, penning a handful of hits. Weatherly's biggest success as a songsmith came in 1973, however, when he wrote five of the nine songs on Gladys Knight & the Pips' Top Ten album Imagination, including the soulful "Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me" and "Midnight Train to Georgia" ("Midnight Plane to Houston" was the original title), a pop and R&B number one smash in September 1973. It scored two Grammy awards the following year. Weatherly recorded several albums for Buddahin the mid-'70s, and a few on ABC and Elektra. He has since co-written with younger country acts and provided Vince Gill, Bryan White, and others with hit songs."

Green
Green (1969)

AMG review :

"Green's self-titled album was a pretty average, somewhat naïve late-'60s pop-psychedelic effort. The influence of late-'60s British psychedelia was evident in some of the wistful songwriting and the use of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band-influenced horns and reeds; "Have You Ever?" even has a lyric referring to Sgt. Pepper's band. There were also traces of West Coast folk-rock and psychedelia in some of the guitar work, melodies, and harmonies; "Sunrise #7," for instance, sounds a little like a formative Stephen Stills or Neil Young composition from the Buffalo Springfield days. But as good as the inspirations from which the band drew were, the all-original material didn't craft or blend these into something memorable or distinctive. There's also a somewhat low-energy, reserved feel to the performances (particularly in the vocals) that works against the effectiveness to some extent; mild pop-psychedelia can be nice, but it sure helps if there's some forceful conviction and emotion in the execution. [The CD reissue on Fallout adds four acetate demos of songs that were re-recorded for the LP.]"