94. The Byrds - Younger Than Yesterday (1967)





















Track Listing

1. So You Want To Be A Rock 'N' Roll Star
2. Have You Seen Her Face
3. C.T.A.-102
4. Renaissance Fair
5. Time Between
6. Everybody's Been Burned
7. Thoughts And Words
8. Mind Gardens
9. My Back Pages
10. The Girl With No Name
11. Why

Review

If there is something you can say about the Byrds, it is that they always manage to please. They have a lot of albums in this list and until now they have all deserved inclusion. This is no exception and it may actually be the best Byrds album reviewed until now.

In this album the Byrds move slightly away from pleasant folk-rock into a more experimental territory and they do it perfectly. In some songs it is more crass, like in C.T.A.- 102 where the inclusion of alien commentary and UFO sounds on the music might be a bit too much, and yet it works.

On the rest of the album The Byrds use a lot of backmasking to very good effect, it doesn't sound weird and experimental for experimentalism's sake, it actually improves the music's texture and melody... if you can imagine that. The Byrds use backmasking for melodic purposes instead of the more common: "because it's weird and we're on drugs" reason.

Definitely an album to get and listen to repeatedly. This last reccomendation is essential, Byrds albums really benefit from repeated listenings, while they may sound quite normal and even trite the first go they reveal beautiful hidden depths. You can stream it from Napster or buy it from Amazon UK or US.

Track Highlights

1. Everybody's Been Burned
2. Thoughts And Words
3. So You Want To Be a Rock 'N' Roll Star
4. C.T.A. - 102

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Despite the album's moderate chart performance, its critical stature has grown substantially over the years. In 2003, the album was ranked number 124 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Younger Than Yesterday was remixed and remastered at 20-bit resolution as part of the Columbia/Legacy Byrds series, reissued in an expanded form on April 30, 1996. The six bonus tracks included both sides of the "Lady Friend" single, another exemplary Crosby track puzzlingly left off the album "It Happens Each Day," a throwaway written for a Tony Curtis/Claudia Cardinale film vehicle of the same name, "Don't Make Waves," and an instrumental "Mind Gardens" as a hidden track.