Originally Posted by
benross
There are [[at least) two major problems with this album. One is the overall muddy quality of the production, as all the sounds, vocal and instrumental, seem merged into an indistinct blob, with no sharp punctuation. The other is the insistence that almost every song had to have all three vocalists singing, generally in unison. Since the group was known, principally, for Diana's distinctive voice, it would have made sense to follow that formula on this record. As a case in point, Diana's solo vocal on the first verse and a bit of the last verse of The House Of The Rising Sun seemed promising; in the last verse of that song, in particular, she was able to cut loose, a bit, to demonstrate her interpretive skills, but with all three singing the middle portion together, the narrative lost its punch, and it didn't have to be that way; The Animals' version, which supposedly was being replicated, did not have the whole group singing throughout. I did appreciate Mary's duet with Diana on Because, and I believe that if the harmonies had been limited, the concept could have worked. Also, I was not enamored of the group's efforts on I Want To Hold Your Hand and Can't Buy Me Love. Too, it seemed that Florence sounded less than disciplined [[and dare I say, "drunk") on several of the songs, especially the two outtakes. The arrangements seemed unplanned, and the overall effort seemed unfocused and rushed. The cover photo was superb, but the album, especially over time, sounds disappointing, particularly given the potential that the concept seemed to promise and given the general excellence that H-D-H created elsewhere that year, as illustrated in most of the Where Did Our Love Go album's glossy, polished-to-perfection production values.
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