(Rhino)
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
As much as they may be now be remembered as second wave Brit Invasion blues revival architects, for the impact they therefore had on the mainstream rock of the next ten years, the Yardbirds were most impressive as both raw protopunks and pure pop magicians. Their best work, comprehensively collected here on this rather incredible two-disc set, was both prophetic and ominous, at times claustrophobic. Along with the Hollies and the Velvet Underground, they are the band whose work seems to (ironically, in their case) point the way toward the dichotomy that would soon create alternative rock.
A raucous and deservedly legendary live band, the Yardbirds are best seen as a performing unit in Michaelangelo Antoninoi's Blow Up, in which quick flashes of the band are played against an increasingly wayward narrative to forge a colorful, guttural impact, the music slicing and droning with a madness belied by the almost disturbing disaffection displayed by the band. These guys were Serious all right. The four vicious live cuts here will send you off in obsessive search of the LP that spawned them, Five Live Yardbirds -- they sear because they're maniacal but utterly dignified.
Even at the beginning, on their recordings of relatively accessible and clean blues records like John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom," the band extracts an oppressive sleaze that fills the senses, whereas someone like the Kinks would've just snarled and banged through it. That was laid down, alarmingly enough, in 1963 (released two years later). That same nocturnal, smoky texture runs through the original "Honey in Your Hips," and the genuinely sinister take on Sonny Boy Williamson's "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl," transforming the lecherous original into some approximation of the Big Bopper's serial-killer relentlessless, without ever breaking the tension with the maniacal laughter common to his records. These are the most appealingly murky of all white blues records; even if instrumentals and marginals like "Got to Hurry" and "Steeled Blues" sag, they still score on atmosphere and crunchy production.
Many bands of the late '60s have retained their modern sound through the years; what's more unusual about the Yardbirds is how darkness permeates their work. Close your eyes at certain points and you feel you could be downtown at a trendy college rock show, this year or anytime in between, but the sense of doom they were masters at exerting, to seemingly no effect beyond a capturing of the desperation and fear of the times, has not been duplicated. This manifests in their blues cuts -- their "I'm a Man" is less a cover than a deconstruction, shouted and moaned and tossed off in a fit of seeming sickness against the cacophony -- but more fascinatingly in their expertly crafted pop material. Impeccable Brill Building-infected composers with excellent taste in cover material, the Yardbirds easily possessed the capability of becoming a strong bubblegum outfit, and to date they're the only group to combine the sunny melodies of AM pop in their decade with the recorded dread and doubt later explored by David Bowie. The result is constantly unsettling.
The tightest, most assured example is the band's indisputable classic "For Your Love," a tirelessly romantic but shockingly eerie stomper opening with a funeral-march stringed toll before deceptively, exotically falling into a drum pattern that then increases in body-shaking, spasmodic intensity; "Paint It, Black" owes an obvious, inescapable debt to this. Keith Reif makes drunken promises -- "I'd give the moon if it were mine to give" -- with a truly affected tone that strains to be heard over the beats and chimes, and at the most hellish moment, just when it can't get any worse, everything stops, the drums pull in achingly slow, and the band provides a sweet relief in the form of a conventional bridge, a rug that is quickly pulled away. Harrowing, danceable, brilliant, shaken, this is one of the greatest singles of the '60s.
The prospective buyer of Ultimate! will find plenty of other cuts nearly as grand: the outstanding proto-funk "I'm Not Talking," the tower of cowboy glory "Heart Full of Soul," the drama-building "You're a Better Man Than I" (with shatteringly prescient guitar work, radio pop with an inescapable edge), "Shapes of Things" with its mounting distortion, the classic mod track with psychotic edge "Over Under Sideways Down," the barbed Ray Davies lift "I Can't Make Your Way," the Cars-worthy out-of-time b-side "Puzzles," the psychedelic flameout "Only the Black Rose," the powere pop forecast "Goodnight Sweet Josephine." All catchy as hell, all adventurous and restless, all oddly disturbing and feverishly dark. The paranoid dance party is at its most outwardly remarkable on "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago," the loathing spitout and rhythmic glee of which could pass for Joy Division, never mind Interpol.
But to quickly and concisely hear the Yardbirds make the Doors sound like a novelty act, dig the profoundly fucked up "Evil Hearted You" and its startling, furiously foreboding b-side "Still I'm Sad," which reimagines "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" as a terrifying funeral dirge. This 45 was one of the most blissfully strange singles of the '60s, and emphasizes above all else just how valuable and unusual an entity this band was in its prime.
To focus on the 'Birds' craft gives insufficient credit to their peerless rhythm section, bassist Paul Samwell-Smith and drummer Jim McCarty. They can force the songs into submission, regardless of context, powering through "He's Always There" (more threat through harmony, here augmented by ruthless electric guitar and come-ons), the creepy "Sympathy for the Devil" prediction "Little Games," and they make the outright bizarre "Ha Ha Said the Clown" break through the speakers. Live for a time in the space between the harmonies and the pounding on "Turn Into Earth" and see how much it messes you up.
With a few too many showoff guitar numbers (I could do without Jeff Beck's "The Nazz Are Blue" and Jimmy Page's "White Summer"), the Yardbirds' rockers are best when maxed the fuck out, and just as infectious as the Edgar Allan Poe pop music. "A Certain Girl" and "I Wish You would" liberate in their overdriven sound, the tension of "Lost Woman" is nearly unbearable, "No Excess Baggage" prophesizes '90s stop-start dynamics, and "Hot House of Omagarashid" contains a musical saw, bringing the psychedelic sound of the 13th Floor Elevators into the UK.
As seems inevitable for a 57-track collection, there is junk here that you don't need. The Italian songs prove, if nothing else, Keith Reif's versatility as a singer. As if you needed proving of that. On that front, you also get a few period-charming Reif solo cuts. Luckily, the comp, intimidatingly lengthy though it is, skips nothing that a two-disc set shouldn't and is appealingly complete on A- and b-sides, even if that means stooping to a few musical conversations about the high-profile guitarists, whose own songs are wank, vs. the hard-working band. Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and Eric Clapton might have shown off plenty well, but they were never the magic of the Yardbirds -- their parlance, their communication all their own was striking a balance between the most grounded, professional psychedelia you've ever heard and the lofiest blues-rock. But curiously, their work never sounds compromised; it always seems to be teetering on the edge of a cliff, giving a constant rush. If you don't love them, you will.
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