Gene Clark – Gypsy Angel: The Gene Clark Demos 1983-1990

By the turn of the 1980s, ex-Byrd Gene Clark’s glory days were dwindling fast. Despite three good-to-dazzling mid-1970s solo albums, the major-label crash-and-burn of McGuinn, Clark & Hillman in late 1979 (after such a promising rebirth just two years before) signaled a retrenchment for Clark.

By the time he hit the comeback trail, the majors were no longer interested. The remainder of Clark’s career is a labyrinth of unfinished projects, unreleased home tapes, occasional indie albums, and tainted (in the opinion of his old bandmates) Byrds reunions.

But despite Clark’s commercial difficulties, he never stopped writing. The spiritual drive that marked his best work was there until the end, and latter-day efforts such as “Gypsy Rider” (included here) and “Del Gato” match anything in his catalog. On Gypsy Angel, a dozen lo-fi solo acoustic tracks never meant for public consumption, Clark’s rambling, pensive meditations on life, death and karma take on epic proportions (the songs average about six minutes).

Clark’s forlorn croak of a voice and sad, melancholic melodies are almost unbearably fragile here. Though there is an occasional wisp of Clark’s trademark pop-hook mastery — most notably on the haunting chorus of “Dark Of My Moon” and the brief honky-tonker “Love Wins Again” — the trappings of pop ornamentation are stripped bare. It’s just Clark, his guitar, and a sack of wistful, pleading songs. The tapes are raw, and in places, it sounds like Clark is singing from the bottom of a well.

Though Gypsy Angel is sprinkled with straightforward love songs (“Pledge To You,” the ethereal “Your Fire Burning”) and the odd cover (Tom Paxton’s “The Last Thing On My Mind”), it’s the dense, longing lyricism of “Freedom Walk” and “Rock Of Ages” that represent the major additions to the Clark canon. The latter, a yearning, elliptical tune (a rough, bizarre takeoff on its trad gospel namesake), is the centerpiece.

Listening in on this very private audio diary, Clark’s craggy drawl unfurls to reveal a song that may be the most lyrically ambitious he ever attempted. Certainly its shifting narrative — tracing the presence of God through the twists and turns of a long life — is personal, and its preoccupations with the ravages of time and difficulty in finding meaning within life’s mysteries (“Is this all that we’re meant to do/Just get older ’til we don’t know why we’re here anymore,” he croaks) are universal.

Clark the songwriter never shied away from life’s messy contradictions, and Gypsy Angel is overdue proof of that.