Earlier this year, Beach House's Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand recruited members of Fleet Foxes, The Walkmen, Grizzly Bear, Fairport Convention, Wye Oak and Lower Dens to recreate Gene Clark's 1974 album No Other under the name "The Gene Clark No Other Band" at a few shows on the East Coast. Today, the entirety of the 19-member supergroup's January 16th concert at the Music Hall of Williamsburg has been made available to watch via YouTube. Enjoy the 50 minute show above.
For those unfamiliar with No Other, the album by former Byrds member Gene Clark was initially a huge commercial failure, with Clark spending an inordinate amount of money to finish its recording, and Geffen Records deleting it from their catalog just two years after its release. Once the album was reissued on CD in the early '90s though, it gained new status as a "lost classic," as is noted by Clark's friend Sid Griffin in a video preceding this concert. Now, as he says, No Other is remembered alongside Love's Forever Changes and the Beach Boys' Smile as an album that was criminally under-appreciated the first time around.
Made up of (mostly younger) artists whose work has no doubt been influenced by the psychedelic folk of No Other, The Gene Clark No Other Band did a fantastic job of recreating the album using a roster of revolving vocalists. Fleet Foxes frontman (and current Columbia University student) Robin Pecknold takes the lead on opener "Life's Greatest Fool," and duties are given to Fairport Convention's Iain Matthews, Grizzly Bear's Daniel Rossen and The Walkmen's Hamilton Leithauser elsewhere. It's especially cool to hear Matthews, a founding member of Fairport Convention, and the only one of Clark's contemporaries present here, rock the stage alongside reverent youngsters.
This concert is also a treat for indie rock fans, as Fleet Foxes, The Walkmen and Grizzly Bear are all currently on some sort of hiatus or another, and Beach House hasn't released an album in two years. The Gene Clark No Other Band seems like it was a very fun collaboration for all involved, as well as an important act of historical preservation for Clark's legacy, as he passed away in 1991 at age 46. It's a shame that he didn't live to see No Other, which he considered to be his magnum opus, given such a loving tribute by a new generation of musicians.
View the concert's setlist below (with each song's lead vocalist noted), and visit Beach House's Zumic artist page for more of their music, videos and news.
