10 albums that sound better on magic mushrooms
Rock and roll has never been shy about its narcotic intake. As much as people might like to put on blinders as to what happens behind closed doors, there are always going to be those few albums where it feels like you can’t talk about them without mentioning the drugs at play when they were recorded. Some drugs might be easier to spot than others, but when it comes to magic mushrooms, albums by artists like The Beatles have got you covered.
Since drugs have been known to make a lot of music sound better, getting the visual component of mushrooms makes any song feel like it’s taking place right in front of you. Not with instruments, mind you. More like the music is appearing in front of your face as you fall into a state of bliss in your headphones.
For all of the great rides that people have experienced on mushrooms, though, nothing can ruin them worse than a bad trip. Some songs might have gained their heaviness through the use of magic mushrooms, but the ones that lull the listener into a trance are those that ease you into it, keeping everything very sparse and making sure that nothing gets too out of hand once the band starts.
Whereas there might be gateway drug albums that allude to the rough side of the tracks, these are the albums that will keep you grooving for as long as you need. You might not have to leave the comfort of your room, but by the time the record finally stops, you’ve been taken on a long journey you won’t soon forget.
10 albums sound better on mushrooms:
10. The MadCap Laughs – Syd Barrett
Seeing Pink Floyd continue without Syd Barrett seemed impossible in the late 1960s. Barrett was the spiritual leader of the group, and any band that didn’t have time for his strange visions anymore was bound to go through some rough patches in their discography. Barrett was still not holding up well, either, but The Madcap Laughs is still one of the single strangest records ever put to tape.
Since Barrett recorded most of this folk outing by himself, it feels like you’re looking inside the mind of a deranged individual throughout its runtime. If you were to take the journey with some chemical assistants, though, it’s easy to realise the album for what it is rather than what it could have been as a Floyd piece. After being separated from his band and right before he closed himself off from the rest of the world, this is one of the last invitations inside Barrett’s warped imagination.
9. Merriweather Post Pavilion – Animal Collective
Of all the genres that got a revival in the 2010s, the psychedelic movement seemed to be one of the last ones poised for a comeback. And yet, once everyone decided that the garage rock revival had run its course, people were willing to get back on the train of Flower Power with artists like Kevin Parker leading the charge. Tame Impala may have been the obvious choice for this list, but Animal Collective understands more than anyone how to create a tapestry of sound from the moment they start playing.
As much as Merriweather Post Pavilion has hits on it, this feels like an album you must sit in to fully appreciate. Even when someone is stone-cold sober, they could probably still get a contact high from a record like this, almost like the band is focusing on making subtle moments that would work incredibly well when intoxicated. Compared to albums that most people let flow in one ear and out the other, Animal Collective created a project where the music seems to wash over you from the minute it starts.
8. Surrealistic Pillow – Jefferson Airplane
The Haight-Ashbury scene was always prime inspiration for any kind of surreal music. At this point, everyone was consuming mind-altering drugs for breakfast, so it wasn’t out of the question for people to start putting their everyday lives into song. Even for a scene known for being mostly made up of stoners, Jefferson Airplane got more than a little bit on the nose when they were making Surrealistic Pillow.
Although many people remember ‘Somebody to Love’, the real standouts are when the band start jamming on a few riffs and comes up with something new in the middle of a song, almost like they found a way to sync up their intake at just the right moment whenever they hit on a huge jam. Despite its popularity, there’s still a good reason why ‘White Rabbit’ is one of the most fondly remembered songs from this album. The band were instructing us to feed our heads, and if we had done that before Grace Slick actually told us, we would have probably figured out the meaning of life the first the needle hit the groove.
7. Electric Ladyland – Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix never seemed to be satisfied just playing standard rock and roll. When looking at his tamer attempts at rock, there are still subtle nuances that no one had ever thought of before, either touching on soul music or using his wah-wah pedal to absolutely destroy your eardrums. Hendrix was not looking to create a pop album when he went into the studio. He wanted to stretch, and when he reached his third outing, he had plenty of room to work with to create magic.
Since most of Electric Ladyland is known better these days for songs like ‘All Along the Watchtower’ and ‘Voodoo Child’, it’s about time people give love to the more episodic songs in the track listing. There may be some great moments spread throughout the record, but a song like ‘1983 (A Merman Should I Turn To Be)’ is a love letter to stoned-out hippies everywhere, featuring pieces that sink you deep into the ocean’s depths with just a few sounds. Progressive rock still loomed in its shadow, but for anyone willing to take the plunge, the loner elements of Hendrix’s album put him on the same level as musical giants of any genre.
6. Disraeli Gears – Cream
Cream always had a no-bullshit attitude whenever it came time to play. Although Eric Clapton was already a rock genius through his work with The Yardbirds, bringing in Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker to offset him was like putting rocket fuel in a state-the-art muscle car. The musical world was already veering towards the abstract side of rock, and Disraeli Gears took both the light and the dark side of blues and put a neon-coloured spin on it.
While ‘Strange Brew’ and ‘Sunshine of Your Love’ remain the hits for a reason, the back half of the album is where the band start to spread out. Sure, they had their songs like ‘We’re Going Wrong’, but tracks like ‘SWALBR’ and ‘Tales of Brave Ulysses’ are the kind of existential journeys that could have come out of any stoner’s mouth when they start flying for the first time. For as much as they claimed to be a blues band with hints of jazz throughout their tenure, Disraeli Gears is a stoner album in blues clothing.
5. …Like Clockwork – Queens of the Stone Age
There’s a good chance that any Queens of the Stone Age album could qualify for this kind of list. The band have worn their substance abuse on their sleeves throughout their greatest albums, and it’s not like someone’s listening to a song like ‘Monsters in the Parasol’ not expecting to see something freaky. Once Josh Homme had a brush with death, …Like Clockwork became the hard rock juggernaut that any stoner could approve of.
Telling the story of his existential fear in the face of certain death, Homme’s masterpieces like ‘Smooth Sailing’ and ‘My God is the Sun’ feels more like a tale of a former stoner who’s learned to control his intake before it kills him. Still, it’s hard not to get swept up when he talks about raining fire from above in some of the songs. He may have embraced being alive and living in the moment, but it still makes for a clear sonic picture once you’ve had a few running through your system.
4. The Piper at the Gates of Dawn – Pink Floyd
The entire drug scene in England was already starting to become very different by 1967. The Beatles had already dove headfirst into psychedelic territory, and it was up to the rest of the world to either follow suit or move out of the way for the next few years. Whereas most tried to keep things light and down to Earth, Pink Floyd debuted while searching for new sonic landscapes.
Even when put up against the best drug albums from that time, Syd Barrett sounds like a man possessed throughout the album, looking to voyage into unchartered territory on ‘Astronomy Domine’ and ‘Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk’. There are some jaunty songs every now and again, but the best parts of the album are about taking those psychedelic visions and somehow finding a way to make them a reality for a few minutes on the tape. The drugs may have eventually swallowed Barrett, but that doesn’t take away from the auditory headtrip that he gave his listeners.
3. Live Dead – The Grateful Dead
It almost feels like cheating putting a band like The Grateful Dead on here. The band have always been proud of their stoner credentials, and it’s hard to even go to any of their reunion shows without getting some kind of contact high in one of their massive crowds. If you want to truly experience what that sounds like every day, just listen to what they did when they took the stage in their prime.
As opposed to other live albums that just seem to play the music as is, The Grateful Dead take their usual hit songs and stretch them out as long as they want, resulting in the kind of jams that most can get lost in. Jerry Garcia has always steered the ship in the right direction, though, and he’s more than happy to guide the way with his guitar, creating different musical colours as he plays that no one would have even thought were possible. In fact, Live Dead might be the most apt title for an album like this, considering you can see the afterlife while you’re still breathing whenever it comes on.
2. Strange Days – The Doors
For every light, there has to be a dark. Magic mushrooms might open up a huge number of possibilities, but there are always going to be those few trips that tend to take you to new places that aren’t exactly stoner-friendly. The Doors never shied away from the cold horrors of the world, and Strange Days is one of the most grizzled psychedelic experiences ever created.
Adopting the sounds of synthesisers, most of the album has an ominous, brooding energy behind it, taking the bluesy sounds of ‘Love Me Two Times’ and making them sound like they could be used in the background of a horror movie. The real horrorshow comes from Jim Morrison, who sounds like he’s about to split his throat when working on songs like ‘Horse Latitudes’ and then calms down to a soft croon on ‘I Can’t See Your Face in My Mind’. While the music is definitely something that you need to internalise at some point in your life, no one’s going to blame you if you turn off ‘When The Music’s Over’ if it becomes a little too much.
1. Magical Mystery Tour – The Beatles
The Beatles’ greatest drug-themed albums have all usually had a theme behind them. Revolver saw them incorporate new sounds no one had heard before, and Sgt Pepper had Paul McCartney take the reins as bandleader as they made the first proto-concept album of the psychedelic movement. There were still more places to go, though, and Magical Mystery Tour was the perfect record for magic mushrooms…if only because it’s a hot mess.
While the film it accompanies seems to be a psychedelic bore for some, hearing songs like ‘The Fool on the Hill’ and ‘Blue Jay Way’ are both great time capsules of the era and an absolute trance to listen to, especially hearing George Harrison sing ‘Please don’t be long’. Even when it’s not music from the movie, the singles included, like ‘I Am the Walrus’ are what happens when a drug trip is put into song form for four minutes at a time. Magical Mystery Tour may not hold up as the best Beatles album, but you can’t deny that for their druggy period, this is among their finest work.
