Buffalo Springfield Again by Buffalo Springfield

Buffalo Springfield Again, the second album from the Los Angeles band Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Richie Furay, Bruce Palmer and Dewey Martin had formed in 1966, came out on Atco in October 1967. Where the debut was knocked together in a hurry, this one dragged on for nine months and nearly tore the group apart: by the end each member was more or less producing his own songs away from the others, which is how you get a record pulling in five directions at once and somehow richer for it.

The folk rock is still there, but the band pushes out into psychedelia and hard rock. "Mr. Soul" snarls, "Expecting to Fly" floats off on a lush cloud, and "Bluebird" and "Rock & Roll Woman" ring and chime, all four put out as singles. It only reached number 44 on the Billboard LP chart, yet critics came to rank it among the psychedelic era's classics, and Rolling Stone placed it at 188 on its list of the 500 greatest albums in 2003 and again in 2012.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.