Customer Reviews

Changes Near

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If you love the Byrds' hit single "Eight Miles High" ... well, here's an entire album with the same vibe.

Each and every track features 12-string electric Rickenbacker, heavily compressed and echoed. Airy harmony vocals sing of girls revolving. The lush mixes are sweetened by hints of Mellotron, tabla and tamboura. If this sort of thing sounds familiar and appealing to you, go for it.

True, the melodies are rather unimaginative, and the lyrics are nothing to write home about. But the SOUND is what matters here, and Quarter After has nailed this particular idiom cold.

Recommended for fans of the first psychedelic era. Of course, you should first obtain and memorize the original Byrds albums, especially FIFTH DIMENSION and the utterly sublime NOTORIOUS BYRD BROTHERS.

The best of the BYRDS reincarnated. Not a clunker in the whole album, nor the prior album. The Byrdsian groove that permeates their sound is like a lovely warm blanket of grooviness'. Love the artwork to, the art work on the first release was pretty groovy too.

The Quarter Afters' Changes Near is an accomplished, finely-crafted record in the Neo-Folk Psychedelic space. The production is consistently strong and the mix and the sound quality somehow manage to be both old and new at the same time.

It's a big step forward in the evolution of The QA, as well as a big step back toward the roots of their family tree, The Byrds. To review The QA one feels compelled to address their relationship to The Byrds. They are direct off-spring, perhaps a grandchild. In the song, appropriately titled "This is How I Want to Know You", one can hear all of their signature elements--12 string Rickenbacker, layered, smooth harmonies, loose rockin solos going a little longer than you'd expect, shakers and tambourines and well crafted, tight lyrics. This is the language the Campenella brothers use to get to know us. So, if this is how you want to know them, you'll love it.

It's McGuinn's guitar and Clark's vocals influenced greatly by Petty, Parsons and maybe some early REM. That's the space. However, the band is able to bring something new to it by writing and producing the songs in a more loosely crafted, and modern way. It's on the edge of falling apart sometimes, which at moments reminds me of a live Replacements show circa 83. Or the White Stripes at The Bowery Ballroom a few years back. It's this looseness that gives the band it's distinctiveness--that which makes it an acorn falling not far from the tree, rather than just a branch on the Byrd's Tree. In lesser hands it might be derivative, but in their skilled hands it shines anew. The Quarter After are a band first, and throughout the record we are always aware this is a recording of a tight, touring rock band. That's not something one hears a great deal of anymore in these days of Pro-Tools and Auto-Tune.

When they own this space, in songs like "Sanctuary", "She Revolves", "Early Morning Rider" and "See How Good it Feels" they are able to transcend the genre and make you wanna get out the tie-dyed shirt, have a libation and just feel groovy. This record delivers when it comes to jangle and shake and I only wish I could listen to it late at night, on vinyl, with my old Pioneer headphones.

It tends to get a little unsure of itself in songs like "Counting the Score" and "Nothing Out of Something". Here Dominic Campenella gets vocally naked, without a lot of backing band while singing in the higher, non-Clark-like registers, and it feels a little thin and not as seasoned at times . But these are brief moments in the overall record. Mostly, we are on a slow, vibey, new-age sixties journey in wonderland, as experienced in the masterful "Winter Song". This one is a gem reminiscent of George Harrison at his best.

The lyrics throughout this record are strong and thoughtful and fit so well into the structure of the songs. At times they tend to be hopelessly buried in the mix, but that's also one of the techniques they use so effectively to drive the music forward. The lighter, more hopeful lyrics seem to be truer to their nature--when the lyrics turn dark they tend to come across as more self-conscious and affected. But one should be careful not to take some of the easy couplets for granted--like most good rock lyrics, they are deceptively simple. As in "She Revolves".

Tom Petty always described the Heartbreakers music as Rock and Roll, never just "Rock". And that is true for Changes Near, it's good time fun Rock AND Roll.