Artificial Energy starts with a stutter on the snare and a full brass section before the band comes in with guitars and vocal harmonies. But something's wrong. The brass is clear as a bell but sounds like it's playing down the street, not a part of the whole arrangement even though it's constant force is keeping an otherwise fairly standard rock tune bouyant. The song is about being so sped up on amphetamines that you only find out you've committed murder during your come down. Bum. Mer.
The story takes us from the elation of the come on to the worst of the plunge down. So, what at first might seem a bizarre mixing decision gains some weight as a canny trope to suggest the out of body fog that a big speedy time can give. The end features the kind of druggy frown of a bad time with a little feedback that seems to drag itself under a rock.
Goin' Back is The Byrds we knew were still in there under the crazy trumpets and words of the opener. But again it's a strangely muted version. The vocals are low in the mix, however full bodied and like on the previous two albums there is no big pop riff on the Rickenbacker to announce it. It's a cool and laid back ode to returning to the energy of childhood imagination by the great Carole King and Gerry Goffin and the Byrds glide through it as though in pennance for the decadence of Artificial Energy. A first listen might have it sounding bland and over light, a regression even (Crosby thought it was) but, really, it's pitched at a perfect level and it's mix of characteristic 12 string chime, block harmonies and Brian Wilson like glockenspiel lead us warmly into the rest of the album. Whether you think it's really going back or a gentle way forward no Byrds fan can keep the door shut as the final gorgeous three part la-la-la chorus glitters into the light.
A gentle ground of clean chiming guitars, low bass note and insistent high hat begins Natural Harmony and for a moment you relax into the thought of a gentle hippy ballad. Indeed the first droning vocal lines "falling through, me and you" seem to support that. Suddenly the voices take flight and there's something wrong. The voices sound a little phased, a kind of underwater distortion. The next iteration reveals a distant whining under the vocals and then when the next section starts with a droning tambura under the voices you stop and realise that it's actually a very early synthesiser. Multi-tracked as all synths in 1968 were monophonic, the effect is intended, overflowing, treacly yet firm and Eastern. Listening now, you might be forgiven a shrug but this is among the first uses of synthesis on a rock record. As such we are hearing a prototype of electronic arrangement and must listen closer. The song is a hippy ballad but instead of the backwards guitars or tapeloops, the wahwah pedals or fuzzboxes of other bands (or even this one in earlier incarnations) the miracle machine of Bob Moog has entered the studio to stay. The usage adds colour and texture but no gimmick. The following decade would render this cliche but here it is innovation and present in our ears at a lot of time and effort. An early Moog filled a room and took an expert to get any sound out of it. Listen to the track. It sounds effortless and natural. Hillman's songwriting has also come many leaps from the bland country rock of his samey numbers on Younger Than Yesterday. And yet this collective forward lurch is kept tightly packed in a song that really only feels (on first hearing) like a conduit between those that sandwich it. Further listens reveal riches.
A segue with a strident ride cymbal flows into Draft Morning. One of David Crosby's long melodic phrase songs without choruses, the voices come in over a gentle rolling guitar /bass figure, only slightly above the backing. Smooth lines and creamy harmonies belie the grievous lyric about being called up for service in the heavily unpopular Vietnam War. The break in the middle is not a solo but an emulated battle with the horn section from the opening track playing military stabs, explosions and gunfire. This fades as the rolling figure returns and the final verse ends in a question which suggests the narrator's resistance. The fade is led by the 12 string playing bugle arpeggios and a gentle la la harmony given the same kind of phasing treatment as the previous song. The lyric really only runs to three sentences yet the song feels full. McGuinn and Hillman worked on this number after Crosby's departure, giving themselves co-writing credits and further alienating them from the already distant Crosby. For all that the song flows easily from those before it and adds a dignified solemnity to the sequence.
Wasn't Born to Follow sounds like it could have come from any of the first three albums with its cantering pace, chiming Rickenbacker and unison vocals. But again something seems a little strange. There is a very slow phase cycle affecting the bass and guitars (a lap steel and a Telecaster join in). The solo section plunges into heavy phasing with a squealing series of 12 string bends and the band sounding like they are playing through a jet engine. A smooth transition takes us up out of this for the final verse which sounds like the old Byrds again but then the playout is distinctly country with a twangy Telecaster kicking up the chord progression (is it James Burton? he's one of the session men listed) before it all ends with the clump of a snare drum. This is the second Goffin/King track on the album and the fact that it sounds like one of the band's originals from an early album testifies to what they always brought to their cover versions. This is so appealing it always feels a verse too short. It feels perfect placed in the soundtrack of Easy Rider with its forward motion and easy vocals.
Get to You begins with a lap steel pouring cream over a 5/4 rhythm. The string section takes on a drunken loping quality. The vocals are one to one harmony and the lyric tells the story of a flight to London to get to the you of the title. The chorus of "that's a little better" squeezes the vocals into the distance and filters them through a phaser as the percussion intensifies. In the third verse the narrator reveals that it's taken twenty years to get there which throws in a little intrigue. Is it sci fi or a projection into the future? One of the briefly returning Gene Clark contributions with McGuinn though the original credit went to Chris Hillman and McGuinn.
Change is Now begins with a bass droning under a bright guitar arpeggio. The hushed harmonies come in with a cathedral like solemnity before a brief country chorus and an electronic solo section which sounds like a heavily treated 12 string and a backwards one over the same drone. The chant like verse returns and lifts to the same Nashville chorus with brighter vocals and a tweedling lap steel. We end with the hushed chant telling us that the fear is gone. A deceptively plain message of peace.
Old John Robertson starts with a bugle arpeggio on the 12 string but then blasts off into a brisk two beat country. Old style Byrds harmonies but with a constant chiming steel. When the title character's wife dies there is a sudden incursion by a string section with a beautiful brisk but still sorrowful figure. Back into the song the phasing is back and stays as the song tells the tale of how this now lonely man was ridiculed without anyone asking for the truth of his life as fear kept them out. A kind of Simon and Garfunkel pathos number but with a cowboy band on acid. All this under two minutes.
Tribal Gathering settles into another 5/4 jazz groove. A busy vocal melody delivers images of angels and butterflies and crowds of happy people. Instrumental breaks scream with electronics and drones. Another verse and another psychedelic break. End. This is what happens when a young David Crosby and a young Chris Hillman write a song together. It's just over two minutes and it's gone from gentle jazz to freakout twice.
Weird synthesised warbling gives way to a gentle harmony vocal about the carefree life under the ocean wave in Dolphin Smile. Another wailing droning break with a thudding funereal drum. Another gorgeous verse and it fades into tinkling and glistening.
Full Sci Fi synthesis for the backing of Space Odyssey. A loping waltz time with sea shanty style melody in the vocals and a solemn fuzz guitar. The seagoing balladry is in fact about space voyages and takes more than a leaf out of Arthur C. Clarke's story The Sentinel. Stanley Kubrick would release his epic 2001: A Space Odyssey later the same year. McGuinn would continue to approach science fiction for his inspiration but this sombre piece about a mysterious pyramid on the moon and it appearing to have waited for an evolved species to find it probably finds its highest expression, there at the apex of the strange object in the song. With a pace and gravity that recalls the dark plea of 5D's I Come and Stand at Every Door we can hear how seriously he took the notions he sang of.
While it can often feel so light that it passed by without leaving a trace Notorious Byrd Borthers yet makes a strong and cohesive statement of its times, of the fear of war and the rewards of peace and hope, always hope. But while those sentiments might remind us of the scriptural references of the earlier Turn Turn Turn the theme here is progression. Twin forces of traditional country voices and the electronica that was turning the most basic of songs into wailing otherworldly things weave together to give us an album both recognisable as The Byrds and suggestive of a very different group. Even the sameness of the instrumental breaks with their drones, feedback and wailing set in gentle vocal harmonies and the rolling chimes of the electric 12 string, and the often unbroken sequencing suggest that the instrumentals are windows on to a swiftly passing landscape of uncharted worlds.
And then there were two. Soon enough there would be only one but McGuinn soldiered on, taking the name into country, hard rock, gospel and finally a kind of grinding early seventies rock that felt like the ship had run aground. Until then there was this lift from the blandness of the previous set that showed how very much could be done when the lineup grew chaotic and tempestuous. It sounds like an album, not a fight.
