Jefferson Airplane - Volunteers (1969)

Dan: 

Volunteers was the last Jefferson Airplane album put out by RCA and it received a lavish treatment complete with gatefold cover, inner sleeve artwork, and astonishing sonics. Discogs lists a whopping 123 different releases worldwide, including a quadraphonic version on both vinyl and reel-to-reel tape in 1973. I bought the Mobile Fidelity CD in the early 90s and also owned a later pressing of the LP. One might conclude that that this was the band's best seller, but it wasn't. Surrealistic Pillow holds that honor with over a million copies sold. 

It's my favorite Airplane album. Songwriting is distributed across the band members, although Marty Balin's sole contribution is the 2-minute closing title song. Volunteers also was Balin's last album as a member of Jefferson Airplane. By this time, it was easy to guess who wrote which song. I am especially captivated by Grace Slick's songwriting. On Volunteers she contributes "Eskimo Blue Day" and "Hey Frederick," two of the darkest songs on the album. "Eskimo" is a lengthy exercise in free association over a somber instrumental backing. It's about the natural world (eels, trees, snow, sulfur springs, the sun and the sea) and human names, crowds and dreams - all of which "don't mean shit to a tree." "Frederick" is about machines but's not easy to decipher. Again, the music establishes the mood as well as the lyrics. Songs like this can be disturbing, but they're honest expressions of despair in a modern world where nature is threatened by human progress. 

"Wooden Ships" also makes its debut on Volunteers. Paul Kantner and Stephen Stills wrote most of the lyrics to accompany David Crosby's music. Kantner even named a future band after the song, and of course it was a major hit for Crosby, Stills & Nash. It's a beautiful anti-war song in which survivors from opposite camps meet and set off together wondering who might have won the war. In contrast to Slick's angry vitriol, "Wooden Ships" responds to the horrors of the world with idyllic serenity. It's remarkable that her songs cohere along with lighter material on the same album.

Steve:

Jefferson Airplane's prior album, Crown of Creation, had been their bleakest album yet, concluding with nothing less than the end of the world itself ("The House at Pooneil Corners"), so Volunteers seems more optimistic in comparison, but only slightly. Their anger has been channeled away from impotent rage and into positive action - even if such action involves forcing the bad guys "up against the wall, mother f**ker!" ("We Can Be Together", which opens the album on an anthemic note). Only Grace's tunes retain the dark pessimism of before, as Dan points out above. Elsewhere, the band seems to find solutions in returning to the Earth ("The Farm", "A Song for All Seasons") and finding strength in a higher power ("Good Shepherd"). Volunteers is a return to simplicity that capitalizes on the band's individual and collective creative strengths.

I'll add words of praise for "Wooden Ships". This version of the song puts me in a dreamlike state, though it was never clear to me what it was about. I imagine a post-apocalyptic world in which a few survivors remain, and they roam the wasteland wondering about the future of themselves and the world. Kind of like the plot of The Last of Us on HBO, which I've been watching lately, come to think of it. No wonder I like that show.