More of the Music of Harry Nilsson
- Nilsson’s sophomore LP returns to the site for the first time in years, here with solid Double Plus (A++) grades throughout this early (but not original) RCA pressing
- “Daddy’s Song” is only on the first pressing, and we do not see many of those in audiophile playing condition!
- Even finding these early reissues is getting to be too much — too time consuming and too expensive, so get while the gettin’s good
- Both of these sides are big, clear and full-bodied throughout – if you are a Nilsson fan, this copy is guaranteed to beat anything you’ve heard before, and by a wide margin
- All of the elements are working here – you get silky vocals, punchy bass, breathy brass, silky highs, superb immediacy, remarkable clarity, and the list goes on
- Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
- 4 1/2 stars: “As ‘Good Old Desk’ opens Aerial Ballet with a cheerful saunter, it’s clear that Harry Nilsson decided to pick up where he left off with his debut, offering another round of effervescent, devilishly clever pop, equal parts lite psychedelia, pretty ballads, and music hall cabaret.”
Those of you who follow the site have probably gathered that we are huge Harry Nilsson fans here at Better Records. Many of us got a chance to check out the 2006 documentary film “Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin’ About Him)” — it’s a lot of fun and I imagine most music lovers will get a kick out of it.
This vintage RCA pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.
If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.
What The Best Sides Of Aerial Ballet Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear
- The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
- The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1968
- Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
- Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
- Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space
No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.
The Beatles’ Favorite American Artist
It’s well known that The Beatles were also huge Nilsson fans, and it’s pretty easy to see why. I can’t think of too many other artists who have created so many sophisticated, yet catchy, pop songs. And that voice! It’s a shame Nilsson blew out his vocal chords in the 70s, rockin’ and rollin’ with John Lennon, but his masterful voice is in fine form here.
What We’re Listening For On Aerial Ballet
- Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
- Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, lost in the mix. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
- The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
- Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
- Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
- Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
- Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.
Side One
Good Old Desk
Don’t Leave Me
Mr. Richland’s Favorite Song
Little Cowboy
Together
Side Two
Everybody’s Talking
I Said Goodbye to Me
Little Cowboy
Mr. Tinker
One
The Wailing of the Willow
Bath
AMG 4 1/2 Star Review
As “Good Old Desk” opens Aerial Ballet with a cheerful saunter, it’s clear that Harry Nilsson decided to pick up where he left off with his debut, offering another round of effervescent, devilishly clever pop, equal parts lite psychedelia, pretty ballads, and music hall cabaret. It’s not a carbon copy, however.
In one sense, he entrenches himself a little bit, emphasizing his lighter edges and humor, writing songs so cheerfully lightweight — a love song about his mom and dad, an ode to his favorite desk, an address or two to a “Little Cowboy” — that it may be a little too cloying for some tastes, even for fans of Pandemonium Shadow Show.
Those are balanced by a couple major steps forward, namely “Everybody’s Talkin'” and “One.” The former finds Nilsson adopting a rolling folk-pop backing for a Fred Neil song, making it into an instant, Grammy-winning classic. The latter was the greatest song he had written to date, a haunting tale of loneliness reminiscent of McCartney, yet with its own voice.