You can investigate music history until you’re blue in the face and never discover another voice that’s as pop-soothing, as countrypolitan, and as Dylanesque as that of Beau Brummels singer Sal Valentino. It’s equally hard to find a songwriterly sensibility that matches guitarist Ron Elliot's. On Triangle, the pair’s melodies (augmented with harpsichords, accordions, and banjos) create an otherworldly ambience that’s as much the American South as it is San Francisco psych, as much Bakersfield country as it is droning L.A. rock. Throw in some Basque country folk and you get the lovely “Magic Hollow”; kick it up a notch and it’s “Only Dreaming”; flip it over and it’s “The Wolf of Velvet Fortune”; throw in Randy Newman and you get the best-ever reading of “Old Kentucky Home.” Produced by golden-eared Lenny Waronker (Little Feat, Neil Young) with beautifully baroque string arrangements by Van Dyke Parks (The Beach Boys), and backed by the Wrecking Crew, this could be the greatest album of the '60s that no one bought. It certainly is one of that decade’s best.

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