Gene Clark: No Other | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- I just spent over two hours listening to the new Gene Clark box set and I couldn’t be happier! Specifically, we’re talking an exhaustive re-release of his 1974 country rock classic No Other, in which the remastered and remixed album tracks are combined with some twenty alternate versions recorded during the original sessions.

It also makes very real and poetic sense for this reissue to be spearheaded by the seminal British indie label 4AD, as founder Ivo Watts-Russell was one of the earliest to pay tribute to the album with an appropriately majestic cover of No Other centrepiece Strength Of Strings on This Mortal Coil’s 1986 LP Filigree & Shadow.

However, for context, we should go back to 1974 where Gene Clark, founding member of The Byrds, had a new solo contract with Asylum for which he made the high-budget, high-ambition No Other. At the time, the album’s lack of singles infuriated then-label boss David Geffen and it sank without a trace, deleted from the catalogue by 1976.

However, the legacy of No Other can be heard everywhere from the lush Americana of Mercury Rev to the dazed confessionals of Father John Misty, but with its own dark, expressionistic atmosphere that transcends practically everything it went on to influence.

In short, No Other is a masterpiece, and with this loving restoration, it gets the widescreen treatment it’s always deserved. Producer Thomas Jefferson Kaye was influenced by Phil Spector and Brian Wilson, and the record sounds suitably ornate. The all-star LA session musicians lay down astonishingly funky tracks for what is essentially a folk rock record, while Clark’s beautiful, mournful vocals tell hallucinatory, existential stories inspired by euphoria and transcendence but also darker obsessions (or “lower forces” as Clark once described them).

The original eight songs which comprise the album have been remastered with an astonishing attention to detail, each instrument sounding crystal clear, while the remixes add additional dimensions to the songs. The snaky groove of the title track, for instance, sounds positively psychedelic with the fuzz bass pushed to the fore. Elsewhere, the cosmic dread of Some Understanding has its electric organ drones beefed up, giving the song an even more ethereal, haunting feel. That said, while the remastered album does enhance some sonic dimensions, it still respects the source material. The swelling arrangements and Clark’s soulful delivery are all intact, but given such clarity it sounds like he’s in the room with you.

Clark has said that one of the reasons No Other ended up being such an expensive album to make is that it simply took a lot of studio time before the songs sounded the way he wanted. Scholars of the record will thrill to the earlier studio takes included here, which reveal how the songs transformed from warm but more conventional country rock songs to the shimmering masterpiece we hear today.

No Other was originally a victim of public indifference and record company derision. This restored version lifts the album to its true status as an undisputed classic of the twentieth century.

- Matt Thrower.