Album Review: The Bee Gees - The Festival Albums Collection 1965-67

The Bee Gees were a vocal harmony group that somehow managed to act like a sponge and create some wonderful songs through the chaos of the music industry. It would be many years later that they would become an international success with their clever take on disco and the mainstream charts. What you do notice with these songs is their ability to take on universal and epic themes, which in a sense became their trademark.

The first of these three albums is actually titled The Bee Gees Sing And Play 14 Barry Gibb Songs, and the opening track is an epic number called I Was A Lover, A Leader Of Men. The harmonies and scale of the song is the first thing you notice. It's the second album that is the most striking of the three, and of course was the album that broke them. Spicks And Specks captured the times, and its more minimal production allows the songs to stand out. The eponymous title track is wonderfully kept in check by the simple piano line that has become a classic Bee Gees signature. The final album, Turn Around, Look At Us is much more of a collection of songs that have been thrown together from their early writing days and overall lacks cohesion.

It's obvious the band were inspired by The Beatles and the folk troubadours of the time, and their ability to delve into genres - such as psychedelic pop - is evident on I Want Home and Jingle Jangle. The band would of course go onto bigger projects and themes on latter records. Embracing disco made them a world-wide success, but ultimately their capability of writing songs that really touched people was their epitaph.