★★★★★
Anyone who has seen AWB in concert over the past few years knows that, more than 30 years into their careers, these guys still put on a great show. And the limited edition CD Soul & the City nicely summarizes a fairly typical AWB concert at New York's B.B. King's club. Probably the biggest surprise to listeners is the full sound that the five-man band puts out...
- www.soultracks.com
2010-12-07
★★★★★
I will admit that, while I've long thought that the Average White Band was one of the truly great bands of the 70s, seeing their fine performance at last year's Rock N Soul Revue (the first time I'd seen them in years) reinvigorated my interest in the AWB of today. It also made me look forward to the release of Greatest and Latest, a portion of which was previewed during the show...
- www.soultracks.com
2010-12-07
★★★★★
A live CD will never supplant seeing a band perform live. That is especially the case for groups as funky as the Average White Band. However a live CD is sometimes the best one can do (unless, of course, a group also decided to release a DVD). Still, a listener can learn things of value by listening to a CD such as the Average White Band's Times Squared: Live From New York, Vol. 2. Times Squared is a follow up of AWB's 2006 live album Soul & the City...
- www.soultracks.com
2010-12-07
★★★★★
Originally released on Atlantic Records, the Average White Band's second album, AWB (or indeed, 'the white album' as it became known) was one of the breeziest, greasiest funk statements ever to appear on record. From a bunch of scotsmen. It's easy to forget just how much of an impact the Average White Band made when they appeared on the scene in the early 70s...
- www.bbc.co.uk
2010-08-22
★★★★★
Released the same year as Hall & Oates' Abandoned Luncheonette and like that lost classic produced by Arif Mardin, AWB had sufficient grit to appease the purists, but enough melodic and rhythmic hooks for it to reach No 1 in America. "Pick Up The Pieces", the attempt to out-funk Ohio Players and their mid-'70s ilk, now sounds as much of a novelty contrivance as Stock Aitken Waterman's "Roadblock"...
- www.uncut.co.uk
2010-06-19
★★★★★
Once their name was a candid joke about their limits, their values, and their aspirations. Now it's a flat statement of fact. Swinging California pop in the manner of the Doobie Brothers and Pablo Cruise, cool in its passions and its rhythms and uninspired in its composition, and who cares who got there first.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
Formed in 1971, it's a bizarre sign of those far off times that the very thought of a Scottish soul band being able to cut it in a market that was predominantly black and American should lead them to adopt such a self-effacing name. Truth be told, the stew of horns, popping bass and heartfelt vocals was every inch the equal of their spiritual cousins across the Atlantic. Let's Go Round Again, a digital hoovering up of their choicest cuts from the glory years, is all the proof you need...
- www.bbc.co.uk
2009-06-12
★★★★★
AWB has been hailed as the blackest-sounding white group since the Stones, but that's true only in a very technical sense. This Scottish band is comfortable with only the most narrow range of the music, chiefly with the complex instrumental arrangements of Gamble and Huff's Philadelphia sound. But AWB plays with learned awareness rather than with the fire of the Philly house band, MFSB (whose recent album, Universal Love, provides excellent counterpoint to this one)...
- www.rollingstone.com
2009-06-08
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