Notorious Byrd Brothers

1. Artificial Energy- 10/10: Brilliant use of horns throughout is the highlight. A must for anyone suffering from sanity.

2. Goin' Back- 10/10: A previous Brit hit for Dusty Springfield. This song is echoey and sentimental and folky. Exactly what I look for in a song.

3. Natural Harmony- 9/10: Well, not a single song on the album has yet to have anything to do with the preceding. NH is a Moogish number, about harmony that is natural. Not the best but better than any beatles.

4. Draft Morning- 10/10: One of the best on the album. One of the better war songs ever written. And this fades into the best song of all time....

5. Wasn't Born To Follow- 11/10: That eleven's no spelling mistake. This truly breaks the rating system for standard song. A classic, and the best there ever was.

6. Get To You- 9/10: Though its a very good song, it just seems inferior, due to the masterwork it must follow.

7. Change Is Now- 10/10: The element that really makes my day here is the chorusy bit where it gets fast with the steel guitar.

8. Old John Robertson- 10/10: A jangly folk number about a man in Chris Hillmans' home town when he was young. Silly fun that's better then your Metal Blimp.

9. Tribal Gathering- 5/10: The only dud. No suprise, it's by David "Almost Cut My Hair" Crosby. He must surely suck....

10. Dolphins Smile- 10/10: ...But wait! Right after the worst song on the album, he delivers one of the highlights! What is wrong with this band??!!

11. Space Odyssey- 10/10: Closing on an unexpected note, Space Odyssey is quite spacy. Many people hate it but I like it. Good to close with.

In conclusion, make this an immediate purchase. You won't be sorry. My only complaint is that I had to listen to it over and over for three days for the songs to stick in my head. But oh man, what a payoff. And not a moment of tedium.

I always thought Fifth Dimension was a masterpiece, and believe me, it is, but Notorious Byrd Brothers makes that album seem primitive in comparison. The employment of vocal phasing, horn sections, and Moog synthesizers is unlike anything the Byrds had done before. Of course, this wouldn't mean anything if they hadn't penned great songs to go along with it, but lo and behold, they do. It's just a shame that this album is so overlooked due to its failure to spawn any hit singles. "Goin' Back" has all the trademarks of a Byrds classic, perfect vocal harmonies, the jangly 12-string Rickenbacker, and the same wistful spirit that the Byrds had always been known for. In fact, it is very similar in structure and in feel to "Turn, Turn, Turn," an earlier classic. "Goin' Back" is really the only thing on here that sounds like vintage Byrds; the rest of the tracks show the band trying to take their sound to new places. "Artificial Energy," a song that deals with methamphetamine, kicks off with a horn section whose melody forms the basis for the song. Chris Hillman's "Natural Harmony" sounds like a forerunner for what would become the "baggy pants" Manchester sound in the early '90s. "Wasn't Born to Follow," a key song from the Easy Rider soundtrack, has some country-ish window dressing, particularly in the guitar picking style.

Despite David Crosby's dismissal halfway through the recording sessions, he manages to turn in a few key moments here that remain some of his (and the Byrds') most poignant. Although performed mainly by McGuinn and Hillman, "Draft Morning" was originally Crosby's song. It deals with the dread a young soldier in Vietnam feels when he wakes up knowing he has to go kill some more "unknown faces." You can almost sense the dread in his voice, as the middle of the song features the sounds of gunshots and explosions while a "patriotic" sounding bugle plays in the background. Kind of an ironic juxtaposition, really. "Tribal Gathering" and "Dolphin's Smile" are two of my favorite songs on this album. Here, we actually get to hear Crosby perform them. "Tribal Gathering" is very similar in sound and style to many of the songs on Fifth Dimension (also note McGuinn's John Coltrane-influenced guitar work), and the song itself has very much a jazz flavor. "Dolphin's Smile" simply has a great melody, and features lyrical imagery about the sea. The closing song, "Space Odyssey," features a Moog synthesizer and lyrics inspired by Arthur C. Clarke's story "The Sentinel" (the basis for 2001: A Space Odyssey a few months later). The melody doesn't really go anywhere, but this song was about experimentation.

This album's bonus tracks are some of the best on the Columbia Byrds remasters, and these are not to be missed. The most notable here is Crosby's great "Triad," a song about having a threesome, although it is sung in an innocent, hippie-ish way, so it never sounds sleazy at all. It fact, it's another one of Crosby's odes to the hippie lifestyle a la "What's Happening?" This is one of the highlights of this entire album. The instrumental "Bound to Fall" sounds like it too could have been lifted from the Fifth Dimension album. "Moog Raga" is also essential listening, as it features McGuinn trying to fuse Indian music with the futuristic sounds of the Moog. Also keep in mind that this was done four years before Pete Townshend fused synths with rock music. These outtakes reveal much insight into the making of such abreathtaking album. It's a shame that the Byrds would never be this boldly innovative again.

With David Crosby (who is replaced with a horse's backside on the cover photo) leaving during the sessions after battling over the song Triad, which did not make the final cut, and Michael Clarke also making his exit, "TNBB" is the work of a band in trouble. The final album doesn't show this so much as the high points are among the best in the Byrds catalog. Despite leaving the band, Crosby gets to shine with the sweetly trippy "Dolphin's Smile." McGuinn has some of his best and most poignant vocals on the anti-war "Draft Morning" and "Wasn't Born to Follow." While most of this album is on the experimental side, the classic Byrds sound makes its final appearance on the folk rocking "Goin' Back" and "Old John Robertson." Of course, the band really wasn't unified enough to create another true masterpiece, and "Natural Harmony," "Get to You" and "Space Odyssey" serve as little more than filler. None of these are particularly offensive (well maybe "Space Odyssey," but it's the final cut on the album and easily skipped), so they do not detract to0 much from the listening experience.

Of the bonus tracks, "Triad" is by far the keeper, as Crosby did have a point and the song should have been on the album (it would have been one of the highlights). The Byrds' version really is superior to the Jefferson Airplane's better known, and still fine version. There's an interesting alternate mix of "Draft Morning" which has some noticible changes in the war sound effects, and if you leave the disc running after "Universal Mind Decoder," you'll hear hidden studio chatter of the Byrds battling in the studio. It's rather fierce and a bit painful to hear, but illuminating in regards to the Byrds serious internal problems.

This is a fine disc (and the remastering remains very fine), and although I cannot give this but a four star rating, I would recommend it higher than some five-star ratings.