The album represented the first full-length musical endeavour of nineteen-year-old Luis Alberto Spinetta, having formed the band in the mid 1960s along with Emilio del Guercio, Edelmiro Molinari and Rodolfo García.

The famous artwork, showing a crying man with a toy arrow stuck on his head, was designed by Spinetta to embody the different lyrical themes of the album.

By the late 1960s, the nueva ola phenomenon was losing popularity and Los Gatos' debut single, "La balsa", had catapulted the emergence of Argentine rock.

The success of Los Gatos paved the way for Manal and Almendra; the three groups are considered the foundational trilogy of Argentine rock, singing serious and artistic songs in Spanish at a time when this was discouraged.

Upon release, the album achieved critical and commercial success, aided by the popularity of the single "Muchacha (ojos de papel)", which remains one of Spinetta's most celebrated compositions.

[1][2][3] They published a magazine, La costra degenerada, with their own articles and drawings and shared common interests and points of view about music, sex, power and religion.

Leonid Brezhnev was appointed General Secretary of the USSR, LSD advocate Timothy Leary was sentenced to 30 years in prison and the Vietnam War escalated.

Tango opera María de Buenos Aires by Ástor Piazzolla and Horacio Ferrer premiered, the literary Latin American Boom (including Pablo Neruda and Julio Cortázar) flourished, Mercedes Sosa made bold political statements as a preeminent exponent of nueva canción and the French New Wave was rewriting the language of cinema.

[10][11][12] "La balsa" sold over 250,000 copies, an impressive number for that time, especially for a song with Spanish lyrics that differed from the cheerful and shallow efforts of the contemporary nueva ola movement.

[15] When Kleiman heard the band play he signed them to RCA Victor, and in November 1968 Almendra released their first single: "Tema de Pototo", backed with "El mundo entre las manos".

[16] Their Buenos Aires debut was at the Di Tella Institute as part of Three Beat Shows, where they introduced "Fermín", "Ana no duerme" and "Que el viento borró tus manos", songs which would appear on their first studio album.

[17] Between April and September 1969, the band recorded their first LP at TNT Studios, Buenos Aires,[18] while a third single ("Tema de Pototo", backed with "Final") was released.

[17] At the time of Almendra's release, the influence of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones had overshadowed the success of the nueva ola, exemplified by the popular teen pop music TV show, El Club del Clan.

[24] Andrés Torrón of Uruguayan newspaper El Observador noted a similarity between Almendra and Pink Floyd's 1967 album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn; feeling that "although reminiscences of Syd Barret can be found in the melodies and prose of the Spinetta of those years, there were already a number of personal traits that would make him one of the most influential rock musicians on this side of the world.

[28][29] Writing for Noisey in 2016, Eduardo Santos argued that "although it does not have any song with protest lyrics or hymns against the establishment, Almendra is an album very influenced by the hippie culture with its ideals of peace, coexistence and love.

[9] Musician Alejandro del Prado described its lyrics as "almost pornographic at the time", citing phrases such as "pechos de miel" and "quédate hasta el alba" ("stay until dawn").

[35] Rolling Stone Argentina considered that the track, "anticipates certain ways of Sui Generis although in the final chorus the deep voice of Pappo and other boys of the environment known as 'Circus' are noticed.

"[6] The strongly paced track, with a rhythmic shift representing the "interrupted dreams" of the title character,[9] has been compared to Pink Floyd's "See Emily Play"[26] and is considered "the most rocker moment" of the album.

The song changes a line from the French folk song, "Marlbrough s'en va-t-en guerre", from "Mambrú se fue a la guerra, no sé cuándo vendrá" ("Mambrú left for the war; I do not know when he will return") to "Fermín se fue a la vida, no sé cuándo vendrá" ("Fermín left for life; I do not know when he will return").

"[24] Reflecting on the track, Spinetta said: "In front of my house lived an incredible character called Carlitos, a retarded boy, who is in part the personification of Fermín for me.

"[39] The band produced a 35mm black-and-white promotional short film featuring "Campos verdes" and "El mundo entre las manos", which was shown in cinemas as part of the newsreel Sucesos Argentinos.

[30] Ricardo Alejandro Kleinman had signed Almendra with RCA Victor as part of his project of promoting new and "distinguished" music such as Led Zeppelin, Cream, The Who and Traffic, which he featured in his radio show Modart en la noche alternating with more commercial acts.

Part of this project was the inclusion of Spanish-language music that acted as "an Argentine equivalent of the aesthetic searches of post-Revolver rock, which is what was consumed by young people with purchasing power, mostly university students, in Europe and the United States."

[50][51] A double live album recorded at Estadio Obras Sanitarias in December 1979 was self-released on May 3, 1980, featuring several renditions of songs from the band's 1969 studio debut.

[9] According to Eduardo Berti, the album received generally positive reviews, with Rodolfo Alchourrón's orchestral arrangement of "Laura va" universally acclaimed.

The public was scarce and there was no criticism, if you discard what was published in [Pinap], which rather responded to modest press operations of the recording labels to impose that new product, the "beat music", which between 1968 and 1970 flooded the market.

[4] A La Prensa review described it as "a thin melancholy," and it "[faces] its manifestation with the seriousness and depth of who wants to give a testimony of their world, a concern usually oblivious to young authors and performers.

It was a mysterious ray that was integrated from the area of Bajo Belgrano to the bohemian gestures of the countercultural longhairs of the Plaza Francia-La Cueva-La Perla triangle.

[9] A July 1985 survey by journalist Carlos Polimeni for Clarín ranked Almendra as by far the greatest album in the history of Argentine rock music; respondents included local musicians Charly García, Gustavo Cerati of Soda Stereo, Celeste Carballo, Miguel Mateos, Alejandro Lerner and Raúl Porchetto, among others.

Whether aesthetically—listening to [their] two albums, it is not wrong to locate the band between the beat of Los Gatos and the blues of Manal—as well as Del Guercio's sympathy for Peronism or for Spinetta's always singular poetic and spiritual pursuits, Almendra stood out in a peculiar originality.