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Product details
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Track Listings
| 1. Life's Greatest Fool |
| 2. Silver Raven |
| 3. No Other |
| 4. Strength Of Strings |
| 5. From A Silver Phial |
| 6. Some Misunderstanding |
| 7. True One, The |
| 8. Lady Of The North |
| 9. Train Leaves Here This Morning (Outtake - Bonus Track) |
| 10. Life’s Greatest Fool (Alt. Demo Version - Bonus Track) |
| 11. Silver Raven (Alt. Demo Version - Bonus Track) |
| 12. No Other (Alt. Demo Version - Bonus Track) |
| 13. From A Silver Phial (Alt. Demo Version - Bonus Track) |
| 14. Some Mistunderstanding (Alt. Demo Version - Bonus Track) |
| 15. Lady Of The North (Alt. Demo Version - Bonus Track) |
Product Description
No Other was first released in 1974, and has acquired mythic status since. This is due to a number of factors. Foremost was its unavailability--vinyl copies were about as easy to come by as Holy Grails, and so No Other has tended to circulate on homemade cassettes. Then, of course, there was the legendary eccentricity of its creator, Gene Clark, who founded one of the most influential groups of all time, the Byrds, wrote several of their best songs ("Feel a Whole Lot Better", "Here Without You"), and then quit because, ironically enough, he couldn't stand flying (Clark died in 1991).
The good news is that No Other sounds just as marvellous when heard on a CD that anyone can buy in a shop. It is an immensely, almost ostentatiously, ambitious work, complete with choirs and orchestras the sort of aggrandising, bombastic accoutrements that were favoured by many Californian musicians in the 1970s, for reasons that may not have been unrelated to the drifts of cocaine everyone was having for breakfast. However, the songs on No Other survive--indeed, flourish--beneath the mountainous arrangements because they're anchored to Clark's essential humility: the opening track recognises that "Man is life's greatest fool".
The songs on No Other weave elements of funk and soul in with Clark's country-rock leanings with astonishing success "Strength of Strings" could have been recorded by Isaac Hayes. Gram Parsons, who for a while took Clark's place in the Byrds, was fond of saying that his dream was to create what he called a Cosmic American Music, an overarching synthesis of all America's popular forms. On No Other, Clark did it. --Andrew Mueller
Description
Ex-Byrd Gene Clark's early-'70s solo efforts, which rank alongside the recordings of the Flying Burrito Brothers and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young in terms of quality, vision, and appeal, have been unjustly overlooked. This is particularly true of NO OTHER, Clark's 1974 coup de grace. While the focus of NO OTHER's excellent predecessors WHITE LIGHT and ROADMASTER was on stripped down, passionate country-rock, NO OTHER pushes Clark's aesthetic to another level entirely. A cadre of female backing vocalists lend gospel-drenched colourto the album, taking Clark's excellent compositions to church, and giving the whole a sanctified feel.
Amid the strummed acoustics and weeping pedal steel of songs like "Life'sGreatest Fool" and "The True One", there is also the expansive, orchestral feel of "Strength of Strings" which sounds like the Moody Blues by way of the Delta, and the exceptionaltitle track, which encompasses sinuous blues, a light, synthesizer-touched groove, and gospel dreaminess. An unbeatableteam of session musicians gives the record a solid backbone, while producer Thomas Jefferson Kaye adds a high gloss that puts NO OTHER with best of radio-ready '70s rock. Still, it is ultimately Clark's unique, superior songwriting and reflective lyrics that make NO OTHER a treasure worth seeking out.