Search - James Taylor :: Flag (Hybr) (Ms)

Great sound -- Good songs

Daniel A. Cooper | New York, NY USA | 03/15/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This review is for the hybrid SACD version of this album.This is a good, but not great, JT album from the late 70s. There are a few good songs, such as Millworker, Company Man, and his tasty cover of Up on the Hill, but his quasi-disco version of Day Tripper was a mistake. He has the usual suspects in his band, including the solid rhythm section of Russ Kunkel & Lee Sklar, along with Waddy Wachtel and Danny Kortchmar on guitar, all of whom put in their usual quality work.The sound quality of this disc is terrific. The CD layer isn't much of an improvement over the redbook, but the SACD layer sounds considerably better. There is the usual warmth and seperation we've come to expect on good SACDs I really enjoy the presentation of acoustic guitar on SACDs, since this platform does a terrific job of bringing the unique timbre of steel string acoustics to the fore with amazing clarity.The multichannel mix is a solid, ungimmicky presentation and JT's vocals are anchored on the center channel with a tiny amount of bleed to FL and FR. To fully appreciate, you'll need a good center channel speaker, or else you'll need to dial down to the stereo mix on the SACD layer, which is still much better than the CD layer, but loses some of the instrument separation.All in all, this is an excellent sounding version of a perfectly average album."