Third and best album from Dallas-based ‘60s pop-rock vocal group

For their third album, following up their chart breakthrough with “Western Union,” the band thickened their arrangements, deepened their harmony singing, and scored an additional Top-40 hit with the pro-USPS, “Zip Code.” The group continued to write most of their own material, including eight of the album’s original ten tracks, and took over production from Dale Hawkins. The results are a great deal richer and more varied. The opening “Stop Light” lowers the organ from the high sound of earlier albums to bassier church notes. There is country, light psych, bubblegum and blue-eyed soul, and the Kinks-styled “Black is White” adds hot guitar leads to the melodic hook swiped from the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life.”

The band’s baroque pop, such as on “Sweet Bird of Youth,” fits nicely with songs from the Left Banke’s first two albums, and the folk-rock “EVOL-Not Love” sounds like the Vejtables and Beau Brummels. A cover of the Rascals’ “Come on Up” is played straight, but the Spencer Davis Group’s “Somebody Help Me” is given a group vocal arrangement. Like so many one- hit wonders (though, technically, the Five Americans were three hit wonders), there was more than met the Top-5 eye, and this album shows off their high-quality songwriting, singing and playing. As with their previous album, Western Union, the stereo fidelity here is excellent; these albums were better recorded, and the master tapes better preserved than one would expect. Casual listeners might start off with the group’s Best Of, but fans of ‘60s music will want to hear this full album reissue. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

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