Fine 1975 reunion album from 1960s legends
After helping usher folk-rock onto the pop charts during their 1960s run on San Francisco’s Autumn records, and branching out more experimentally on albums for Warner Brothers, the Beau Brummels finally came apart in the wake of 1968’s Bradley’s Barn. This reunion session, recorded in 1974 and released the following year, is a surprisingly fine album, avoiding the temptation to wallow in nostalgia and also the inclination to fully contemporize the band’s sound. Which isn’t to say that the group didn’t update their music; the engineering is very clean, the arrangements lightly softened, and some of the guitars adopt a then-contemporary tone, but the core of the band’s ethos is still heard: Ron Elliot wrote a strong album, Sal Valentino’s vocals retained their emotional quiver and the group’s complex harmonies, missing on their last few albums, were as fetching as ever. This isn’t the raw invention of their earlier work, but the group’s artistic spark was still very much alive. The 1970s touches are light enough to keep this an earnest progression of the band’s original ideas, but different enough to signal something more than a rehash for cash. The country influences with which the group ended the first part of their career (recording for Owen Bradley in Nashville) can be heard in several songs, but the album also succeeds with ballads and mid-tempo rock. It’s a shame the reunion lasted for only one LP, as it’s clear the group transitioned the magic of their mid-60s roots to music relevant in the mid-70s. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com] 