A very odd follow-up to their first major-label offering -- to untrained ears this seems to have very little commercial potential in either the pop or country fields, mixing sluggish though grandiose pop ballads with just a couple of overtly twangy tracks. There is some residual twang, but overall this album leans heavily towards a 'Seventies soft-pop sound, pairing downtempo vocals with swelling (though lackadaisical) arrangements courtesy of Nashville studio honcho Bill Justis. The slow stuff dominates, and I guess we have to assume that Oates and Impellitier were consciously throwing it all away, choosing to make a doleful, contemplative album instead of aiming for the charts. Notably, the Nashville crew got completely switched up, with Dave Kirby on guitar, and Tom Morrell adding a lot of nice pedal steel licks; Morrell seems to have been the most fully committed of all the musicians on here, though I think the singers also were trying to make a real statement of some sort. Twangfans might dig "Suppertime Lovin'," a bouncy hippie-billy number in the mode of Commander Cody or the New Riders Of The Purple Sage, or possibly their dutiful cover of Waylon's "I Recall A Gypsy Woman." The album almost had one dazzling triumph, a version of the Hank Williams oldie, "Cold, Cold Heart," that starts out starkly with just vocals and piano, like something Joni Mitchell might have done in her Blue phase, but then they slowly layer in some steel guitar and more of Justis's rather indifferent countrypolitan-isms, and it slowly fades into mediocrity. I mean, this record could grow on you -- especially if you're into vintage soft pop -- but it mostly seems like a square peg, round hole kind of deal.
.jpg)
