In an era where a lot of important music was being made, ‘The Notorious Byrd Brothers,’ marking the closure of the first era of the Byrds, stands apart. Just 28 minutes or so, this is a knotty, murky and often strange album. Recorded under trying circumstances (David Crosby made his final break with the group during the sessions although his spirit pervades the whole LP), the album is both a celebration of the promise of the counterculture and a predictor of its lost promise (the moments of sudden dissonance on ‘Dolphin's Smile’ and ‘Tribal Gathering,’ for two examples). If ‘Sgt. Pepper’ was the document of the euphoria of 1967, ‘The Notorious Byrd Brothers’ chronciles the other side of coin.