It sometimes makes me wonder if there was something in the water in 1967. The year when everything suddenly came together and clicked. Musically, it was a crazy time. So many classic artists starting, or at their most successful, every instrument and production technique imaginable at the time being used, and The Rolling Stones doing the most un-Rolling Stones album they've ever done. Yes, there are gritty guitars surfacing from time to time, there are blues chord sequences on the odd song, but on the whole they somehow managed to make a near perfect psychedelic pop record. The Rolling Stones. Crazy times, I tell you.
Many reviews have described the album as a Sgt. Pepper rip-off, and it wouldn't be unfair to suggest that perhaps these reviewers hadn't actually heard a single other psychedelic record. For the most part, it only takes the eastern influence from Sgt. Pepper (the same influence that every other band took at the time anyway), and everything else has far more in common with Piper at the Gates of Dawn or Mr. Fantasy. The screeching guitars in Citadel even reflect the American psychedelic acid rock movement of the time.
Their Satanic Majesties Request is one of the rare albums where the famous tracks are generally the strongest ones on the album, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. Bad, because, In Another Land aside, there are no surprise classics on the record. Good, because 2000 Man, She's A Rainbow and 2000 Light Years From Home are astoundingly good songs. The former, with its mind-bendingly syncopated drums and two seemingly unrelated musical sections, is the most straight up standard of the three. She's A Rainbow, a gorgeous piano-led number, has scratchy out of key strings leaping on you from all turns when you least expect them, and 2000 Light Years From Home is filled with eerie organs and mellotrons.
Regularly cited as the album's downpoint, Sing This All Together (See What Happens) (a vague reprise of the opening Sing This All Together) is an eight minute psychedelic jam, along the lines of Floyd's Interstellar Overdrive. Whilst the criticism is understandable, I often get the feeling it's more a case of it being completely unlike The Stones, rather than a bad piece on its own; personally I enjoy it a lot.
The rest of the album follows similar lines. Organs and flutes mix with the standard rock band lineup, the songs are generally quite uplifting and happy.
If you want a hard hitting rock'n'roll album, don't come here. Stick with the rest of the Stones' catalogue. If you want a brilliantly constructed piece of psychedelia, however, look no further than Their Satanic Majesties Request.