If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears Review

The selling point is the blend, and the blend is genuinely unusual: two men and two women, a low alto and a soaring soprano in the middle, arranged so that the parts cross rather than stack neatly. California Dreamin' opens with an acoustic guitar figure, a flute solo that nobody would dare write now, and a lyric about being cold and homesick that is far sadder than its reputation as a sunshine anthem.

Monday, Monday is the other permanent one, a melody that changes shape three times in two and a half minutes. Around them are covers, and the covers are the weak part: Do You Wanna Dance and I Call Your Name are competent and no more. Go Where You Wanna Go and Straight Shooter are the sleepers. The production is dense and warm, cut with the best players in Los Angeles, and it established a sound that half the city spent the next three years chasing.