★★★★★
Jimmy Webb nuts will know all about 5th Dimension: others should. In the late '60s and early '70s they enjoyed enormous hits with Webb's "Up, Up And Away" and Laura Nyro's "Stoned Soul Picnic" and "Wedding Bell Blues", peaking with "Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In" from Hair. If roots R&B fans deemed them too sweetly, sunnily harmonious to be 'soulful', they sobbed all the way to the bank...
- www.uncut.co.uk
2010-06-19
★★★★★
Jimmy Webb was on a roll in 1968, with no less than eight Grammies won for songs he'd written. Six of them were for the high-flying Up, Up And Away, whose hit version was sung by Los Angeles vocal quintet The 5th Dimension. The previous year songwriter and group had made an orchestrated, harmony-rich album that, next to *Astral Weeks and *Forever Changes, was a favourite of Nick Drake's...
- www.mojo4music.com
2009-07-21
★★★★★
Here at Rev-Ola we re proud to present this true undisputed classic of orchestrated, psych-tinged soft pop. The 5th Dimension are one of the most successful American bands of the late '60s. Hey, everybody knows their hit versions of 'Up, Up And Away' and 'Aquarius...
- www.forcedexposure.com
2009-06-08
★★★★★
Of our many guilty pleasures around here, one which we have little opportunity to highlight is our mad love for sixties mainstream pop. Not the little known obscurities necessarily, but the big budget LA productions as performed by groups like Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66, The Mamas and The Papas, The Turtles, The Association, Spanky and Our Gang, and The 5th Dimension...
- www.aquariusrecords.org
2009-06-05
★★★★★
Strange that a black pop chorale should break at the same time as soul and psychedelica--even with a far-out name and black-identified label. I don't know which is worse--straight slick Jim Webb or stoned slick Laura Nyro. (Answer: Hair.) But I still get off on Webb's "Paper Cup," which I always regarded as the authentic alienation song ("Dangling Conversation" was the phony). And get with Nyro's "Wedding Bell Blues."
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-02-27
★★★★★
The 5th Dimension attempts a comeback by redefining itself as a Quiet Storm R&B; act, but gives the game away right off the bat by having themselves introduced by co-executive producer Dick Clark, who declares, "The 5th Dimension is in the house!" Suddenly, the enterprise seems as hip as a Publishers Clearinghouse commercial, and no amount of drum programming by producer Ollie E. Brown can rescue it...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-27
★★★★★
Not only was Soul & Inspiration (1974) the 5th Dimension's last outing on Bell Records, it served as the penultimate long-player to feature the original quintet of Lamonte McLemore, Ron Townson, Billy Davis Jr., Marilyn McCoo, and Florence Larue. Behind the scenes, band politics as well as the power structure at the record label ultimately led to a parting of ways between the 5D and their longtime producer Bones Howe...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-27
★★★★★
Reflections was the 5th Dimension's second album for Bell Records. While not a greatest-hits album, this compiles some of the better tracks from their Soul City albums. The melodic and haunting "It'll Never Be the Same Again" has Billy Davis, Jr. turning in a brilliant, dramatic performance. The group's work with Jimmy Webb is limited here to the sad and whimsical "Carpet Man." Despite their normally high level of work, Reflections does have a fair amount of clinkers...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-27
★★★★★
For their eighth album of new studio material, the 5th Dimension (5D) were sticking to essentials, while attempting to stay modern and relevant. As styles and trends in pop and R&B; were becoming more flamboyant and expressive, Lamonte McLemore, Ron Townson, Billy Davis Jr., Marilyn McCoo and Florence LaRue Gordon remained as solid and somewhat predictable as ever...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-27