Various Artists - Pomegranates 2LP - Finders Keepers

Persian pop, funk, folk and psych of the 60s and 70s. Here are some of the finest Persian pop songs ever recorded. Some are obscure. Many are acknowledged classics within Iran and throughout the Iranian Diaspora. All of them date to the 1960s and 70s, a period of intense modernization and tumult in Iran. These are songs borne of both indigenous and Western tropes and musical traditions. The songs are, by and large, concerned with love and longing, rich in metaphor and emotion, by turns melancholic, wistful, and ecstatic. What is more, they swing; which makes for a unique trove of folk, funk and psychedelic rock, worthy of inclusion in the canon of idiosyncratic pop gems from the global South. Well recommended!