★★★★★
Next to Grand Funk, they're the country's top touring act, and they sell singles in the multiple millions besides. They're slick as Wesson Oil. And when they choose the right material and go light on the minstrel-show theatrics, they're fine--next to "Maggie May," "Joy to the World" is the most durable single of the year. Their albums do vary--avoid the "Joy to the World" vehicle Naturally--but I think this is the best...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-17
★★★★★
Things seem to be winding up for the Kings of Oversing, but this fourteen-song compilation demonstrates that the singles, unlike the albums, didn't diminish much. It also suggests that though they're praised when at all for translating weirdos like Nilsson and Newman into AM, they also deserve credit for preserving the odd goody (two apiece) by the likes of Paul Williams and Hoyt Axton. Only Lighthouse keeper Skip Prokop proves beyond help.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-17
★★★★★
Their worst-ever studio LP doesn't deserve to be called slick. It's professional and expensive, yes, but it's also a mess--oversung, overarranged, overpackaged. Their tasty material has turned into a mush of campaign-promise social consciousness, and the two songs I know in other versions sound bloated. This could be the beginning of the end.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
I once had hopes for this group, but success ruined them too, encouraging all of their most vulgar plastic-nigger excesses. Each of the (only) nine renditions is more flaccid than the studio version (that's right, no new material) and the "Tenderness" which closes the set, admittedly an exciting climax live, doesn't work any better than it did the first time it was recorded.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
Admitting it won't gain me any of the hip cachet I crave, but I admired and enjoyed this group's first LP. I found the second mediocre and the live job that followed it wretchedly excessive, but this one--their fourth in just fourteen months--gets back: exemplary song-finding and not too much plastic-soul melon-mouthing or preening vocal pyrotechnique...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
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