The Byrds

The Beatles are the sound of sitting on a damp wall waiting for something good to happen; of discomfort first mingling with, and then becoming the same thing as, the certainty of salvation.

The Byrds are something different: a beach, a leaf-carpeted grove, slanted sun in your eyes, the promise of something beyond.

I have been listening to this music for 20 years now, so that seems as good a reason as any to invest in a new box set. There Is A Season, it is called. I can’t remember what the previous box set was called, but There Is A Season is a good title, containing as it does a no-arguments-brooked reason for its existence.

There is more Gene Clark here, and with good reason. You don’t miss your water.

Disc 1 kicks off with some pre-Byrds stuff and some tracks from Pre-Flyte. Unlike many exercises of this type, they make pleasant listening aside form, or despite, their evolutionary importance. You can’t say the same for Steve Marriott gurning his way through Consider Yourself or the Reed/Cale demos that lie like the Slough of Despond before the Velvet Underground box set.

Then onto the well-loved classics, straight down the line, with the odd googly for good measure. The tracklisting flows beautifully, a broad and deep introduction to the band with no dud tracks whatsoever: chiming, drowning, skipping, dawdling and traipsing – out on the end of time. The dynamics are spot-on; propulsive and convincing, the rhythm section draws you in like quicksand, the Eighteenth Emergency of Pop.

Tracks tagged onto reissues can shine here, showing themselves to be the true equals of their more celebrated siblings. 65 minutes of bliss – just right. The exact number of drum beats and tambourine tattoos, the exact quantity of piled-high Rickenbacker glory, of heaving walls and pounding floors, of shaken mops of hair and breathless rides home.