COVER IMAGE
LP released: Dec 10, 2013

Vinyl LP pressing. Digitally remastered edition of this influential 1968 album. David Ackles' eponymous debut is a rich emotional experience rife with poignant balladry and evocative lyricism. The eras market was unprepared for such a singular songwriter, but the cult of Ackles is a potent force and this reissue obliges it's demands. David Ackles boasts wonderfully restrained arrangements that only enhance it's power. Perhaps akin to Randy Newman, Scott Walker or the darkest Van Dyke Parks (at least for their inimitability), Ackless debut sounds peerless today. As critic and archivist Richie Unterberger writes in the liner notes, 'About 45 years later, the record is more durable than many a high-charting singer/songwriter statement of the time, precisely for the idiosyncratic qualities that kept it shrouded in obscurity at the time of it's release. This record is an extraordinary achievement - it belongs to a universe bordering on Tim Buckley and Leonard Cohen, not to mention Scott Walker and Randy Newman, but with a starkness all it's own. '