Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| Robert Christgau | C− |
| MusicHound | |
| Rolling Stone | (unfavourable) |
Setting the scene in his book The Beatles Forever, Village Voice and Rolling Stone contributor Nicholas Schaffner wrote in 1977: "Harrison's worldly critics, who had long found his sermons insufferable, responded like bulls to a red flag to Extra Texture, which contains a number of treatises on how reviewers always 'miss the point.'" Even Harison's loyal "disciples", Schaffner added, tended to view the album as "plodding and aimless". Rolling Stone's album review was certainly more music-centred than its Dark Horse piece, at least: Dave Marsh highlighted "You" as a return to All Things Must Pass-style grandeur, and "Can't Stop Thinking About You" and "Tired of Midnight Blue" as "the most effective nine minutes of music" Harrison had made since 1970. Generally though, on an album that was "sketchy at best", Marsh bemoaned the over-reliance on "merely competent" keyboards and Harrison's "affectingly feeble voice". Roy Carr and Tony Tyler of the NME described Extra Texture as "another lugubrious offering", adding resignedly: "the needle of the listener's personal Ecstatograph points sullenly towards zero throughout." Harrison's pleas for tolerance and understanding, like his self-deprecation on the album sleeve, seemed to backfire. As Harrison himself acknowledged, with disarming honesty, in another BBC Radio interview not long afterwards: "People who were never really keen on me just really hate my guts right now. It has become complete opposites, completely black and white."
His biographers have likewise tended to hold the album in low esteem, Alan Clayson describing it as Harrison's "artistic nadir", while to Simon Leng, this post-Dark Horse "rehabilitation disc" came way too soon − resulting in an uncharacteristically passionless work, with its singer sounding "punch drunk". Aside from the uplifting "You", both authors identify "Tired of Midnight Blue" as the set's only saving grace. Gary Tillery notes the "darkly sarcastic" album title for a collection full of such "downbeat" tracks, the darkest of which is "Grey Cloudy Lies".
The album does have its admirers, however. Writing in a Rolling Stone Press tribute book, Greg Kot labels Extra Texture as "something of a return to form for Harrison". A more positive assessment comes from Allmusic's Richard S. Ginell, who views "You", "The Answer's at the End" and "This Guitar (Can't Keep from Crying)" as some of Harrison's best solo compositions and identifies other "musical blossoms" on an album that he believes stands up relatively well to the passing of time.
In a November 1987 interview with Musician, Harrison himself described Extra Texture as the worst of his solo releases: "a grubby album ... The production left a lot to be desired as did my performance."
Read more about this topic: Extra Texture (Read All About It)
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