Grievous Angel by Gram Parsons

Grievous Angel, Gram Parsons' second and last solo album, came out on Reprise in January 1974, four months after he died of a morphine and alcohol overdose in September 1973. Pieced together from sessions he'd cut that summer and produced himself, it plays like a parting gift nobody knew he was leaving.

The voice that keeps meeting his is a young Emmylou Harris, and the two of them twine together like they were born to it, over music that's half country and half rock and roll. This is the fusion Parsons called Cosmic American Music, and it has rarely sounded more natural. The critics loved it; the public mostly shrugged, and it stalled at number 195 on the Billboard chart, the same fate that met his earlier solo work and the Flying Burrito Brothers. Time has been kinder: in 2012 Rolling Stone slotted it in at number 425 when it counted down the 500 best records ever made.

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