Gene Clark: No Other [4AD]

Why you'll love it

This 4AD reissue was remastered from the original tapes at Abbey Road and comes with a printed lyric and credits inner sleeve and a fold-out poster. Publications now call it a lost masterpiece, and 4AD's 2019 reissue campaign drew wide praise.

This edition

• Remastered at Abbey Road
• Printed lyric inner sleeve
• Poster included

About the album

Gene Clark had already co-founded the Byrds by the time he made this, and it was his standout songs on the 1973 Byrds reunion album that persuaded David Geffen to sign him to Asylum as a solo artist. Clark retreated to his coastal home in Mendocino and spent over a year writing, inspired, he said, by Stevie Wonder's Innervisions and the Rolling Stones' Goats Head Soup at the same time. Asylum put it out in September 1974, and its reputation has grown with every reissue since.

Producer Thomas Jefferson Kaye took him into the Village Recorder in West Los Angeles in April 1974 and filled the room: Jesse Ed Davis, Danny Kortchmar, Leland Sklar, Russ Kunkel, Butch Trucks and old Byrds colleague Chris Hillman all play, while Clydie King, Claudia Lennear, Venetta Fields and Timothy B. Schmit stack up gospel-sized harmonies. "Silver Raven" grew from a news story about mysterious signals from beyond the solar system, "Life's Greatest Fool" swings with a choir behind it, and the title track and "Strength Of Strings" stretch out into something close to cosmic soul.

In 2014 Beach House organized four concerts playing the whole album, with members of Fleet Foxes and Grizzly Bear on stage. The sessions cost over $100,000 in 1974; a copy now costs rather less than a decent dinner, which is the best exchange rate we've seen all year.

Also at Kops: more Gene Clark on vinyl · browse Singer-Songwriter

Tracklist

Listen

On 4AD (cat# 4AD 0070 LP), a reissue of the 1974 album.