The Notorious Byrd Brothers

Looking back, it's hard to say exactly how different the album would have been had David Crosby still been a member of the band during its realisation. Though three of the songs were written by him -- "Draft Morning", "Tribal Gathering" and "Dolphin's Smile" -- he doesn't appear, the others performing rather spooky Crosby vocal impersonations which mean the harmonies are as lush as ever. Crosby's voice might have been slightly more distinctive in the mix, but the basis of his contribution is still here. In fact, one of the points of diagreement was the inclusion of Goffin/King's "Goin' Back" rather than Crosby's "Triad" (which appears here as a bonus track), and to be honest the band made the right decision. "Triad" is more of a period piece even than the glockenspiels and harpsichord of "Goin' Back", and though it was covered with spine-stiffening eroticism by Grace Slick on Jefferson Airplane's "Crown Of Creation" its inclusion on "Notorious" would have been an embarrassing weak point.

That an album as varied as "Notorious" works is as baffling as the perception that the sum is greater than its parts. As each track blurs into the next, extraordinary juxtapositions come and go almost without comment: you just get used to the changes. How does the strident brass of the cautionary (speed kills) opener "Artificial Energy" work set against the swooning nostalgia of "Goin' Back"? Why doesn't the orchestral break in the middle of prototype country rocker "Old John Robertson" grate on the senses? And how did McGuinn ever think he could get away with setting words based on Arthur C Clarke's "The Sentinel" (forerunner of "2001") to a sea shanty? Perhaps it's because, throughout, there's a unifying sense of lushness, vocally and musically, which sets each moment shimmering like jewels, while never once coming across as over-rich or gaudy. That's an incredible trick to pull off. Not even The Beatles managed it, as the rather ugly and awkward juxtapositions on the white album show.

The bonus tracks are a mixed blessing. Crosby's elaborate single "Lady Friend" isn't on here -- you'll find it on "Younger Than Yesterday" -- though thematically it charts the rift between them as much as Crosby's appearance with Buffalo Springfield at Monterey. It's also a good parallel to Graham Nash's "King Midas In Reverse". Instead there's an instrumental "Bound To Fall" which sounds half finished, alternative versions of "Goin' Back" and "Draft Morning", the former even more luxurious than the released track, the latter merely emphasising the bugle-like coda faded out of the album version, and an early version of "Change Is Now" sans vocals oddly titled "Universal Mind Decoder", possibly evidence of McGuinn's continuing obsession with science fiction. Unfortunately, before you get to any of these, you have to sit through an eternity of "Moog Raga" which is, just as the name suggests, an Indian raga played on the Moog, and quite horrible, especially since each time you play the CD you have to dive for the off button in order to miss it after the fade in-out ending of "Space Odyssey". Hidden away at the end is the notorious studio tape where Michael Clarke grows ever more entrenched in his inability to play the subtle drum pattern to "Dolphin's Smile". Presumably this sarcastic bickering accompanied the entire recording process, but any evidence of it is completely absent from the sublime finished album. A rare trick indeed.