Gene Clark 6: No Other

Following the fleeting Byrds reunion, the Asylum label held onto Gene Clark, still trying to establish himself as a lucrative singer-songwriter. (They also tried another supergroup with Chris Hillman, Eagles cohort J.D. Souther, and Richie Furay, late of Buffalo Springfield and Poco, fronting former members of Manassas and drummer Jim Gordon, but since we’re talking about Gene Clark here, let’s get back to him.) No Other received the red carpet treatment for its recording, relying on plenty of session cats—Russ Kunkel, Lee Sklar, Joe Lala, even the Allman Brothers’ Butch Trucks—and unlimited studio time, and was promptly ignored upon release, most likely because it didn’t sound like anything else at the time. (The glam portrait on the back cover surely didn’t help.)

It’s a wide-ranging album, beginning with the country of “Life’s Greatest Fool”, which could have fallen off of any of his other solo albums, but is soon overtaken by the backing vocals of the Blackberries. The mysterious “Silver Raven” is too long to be a hit single, but could have been nicely tackled by, say, labelmates the Eagles for some welcome radio exposure. The funky title track rumbles into the frame like the soundtrack of a blaxploitation film; the verse even bears a mild melodic similarity to Sly Stone’s “Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey”, while the overall spirit of later Traffic pervades. “Strength Of Strings” takes even longer to formulate, beginning with a riff that becomes something of a tribal chant that seems independent of the song itself, until it’s revealed as the bridge.

But for the clavinet, “From A Silver Phial” is more country-rock, ending in a terrific wah-wah solo by Jesse Ed Davis. “Some Misunderstanding” runs for an epic eight minutes, fulfilling the “cosmic American music” espoused by Gram Parsons, especially after the fuzz-tone violin comes in. Speaking of which, “The True One” sports a melody and picking evocative of “One Hundred Years From Now”. It’s a relatively upbeat palate cleanser for the more introspective “Lady Of The North”, which melds all the styles heard so far.

All good songs, as might be expected, with lyrics that are anything but hokey, the constant is his lonesome voice, which maintains the same welcome, weary tone no matter the backing. Fast forward 45 years, and No Other had gained a reputation as one of those lost masterpieces certain obsessives like to revere. This time, the British 4AD label—which made its bones on such icons as This Mortal Coil and the Pixies—oversaw a remastered expansion of the album, with arty packaging to match and, in the deluxe vinyl version for those with the shekels to spare, even more session outtakes on SACDs (which we didn’t know they still made) and a Blu-ray with multiple mixes including 5.1 surround. Additional tracks included alternate versions of every song on the album, plus a remake of “Train Leaves Here This Morning” from the first Dillard & Clark album, which had been also covered on the debut album by—no kidding—the Eagles a couple years before.

Gene Clark No Other (1974)—3½
2019 Expanded Edition: same as 1974, plus 9 extra tracks (Limited Deluxe Boxset adds another 11 tracks)