Roger Mcguinn

The solo career of this great rock artist took awhile to gather some steam; his 1976 album, Cardiff Rose, showed that with at least some consistent production and a tight backing ensemble, he could put across a powerful musical vision without having to rely totally on re-creating the sound of the Byrds. For this 1974 album his focus is as wandering as a glaucoma patient who has just gone through a two-hour field test. Many different influences come into his musical world, like strange cooks passing through a kitchen and dropping odd things into the stew.

The second McGuinn, Clark & Hillman album turned into a McGuinn-Hillman album "featuring Gene Clark" when the latter dropped out of the tour ahead of it and then only contributed to two songs on this record, one of which was ironically called "Won't Let You Down." Apart from Clark's two songs, none of this really sounds much like the Byrds, although the stuff is pleasant late-'70s Byrds-influenced rock, sort of folky at its best moment and driven by McGuinn's mournful lead vocals and the soaring harmonies. "One More Chance" was the most Byrds-like of the non-Gene Clark numbers, and "City" was a good song, but, ironically, the two Gene Clark numbers were the best on the record, as good as anything he ever wrote after leaving the Byrds – and this CD is the only way to get them (they didn't make it onto Edsel's anthology).