The Papas & the Mamas Review

The sunshine is gone. This was pieced together while the four of them were separating from each other in every possible sense, and the mood is closer to a hangover than a holiday. Safe in My Garden is a genuinely good opener about wanting to shut the world out. Twelve Thirty, better known as the one about young girls coming to the canyon, is the finest thing here and one of the best songs Phillips ever wrote, an unhurried melody with an ache under it.

Dream a Little Dream of Me is Elliot alone with an orchestra, essentially a solo record, and it was the last hit. Elsewhere the arrangements get ornate and the songs get vague, and there are stretches where the harmony blend, once the whole point, sounds assembled rather than sung together. It is more interesting than the record before it and less enjoyable. A group ending in slow motion, occasionally reaching something lovely on the way down.