perfection on a round piece of plastic - I can t believe it. Finally, after many MANY years, Seals & Crofts Takin It Easy album has been officially released! I can t express how happy I am this album was finally released on CD. I ve waited YEARS for this to happen! This is one of the greatest songwriting albums ever made. I m totally serious about that. I love Elton John, Deep Purple, Three Dog Night, the Blues Image, Norman Greenbaum, etc. I really honestly believe Takin It Easy is right up there with the very best of them. I can t put into words exactly how I feel when I listen to this album. It s like a mystical journey inside my mind combined with childhood feelings and memories that makes the album so delightful to listen to over and over again. It truly is a forgotten treasure. Diversity is important to me, and each song on this album is distinct from all the others. When this album came out in the year 1978, the music scene was beginning to change as punk and new wave entered the scene. Fortunately, none of this affected Seals & Croft s consistently pleasing ability to write one memorable song after another. This album is *entirely excellent* and I truly mean that. The title song really surprised me at first. I didn t think Seals & Croft s could EVER rock this hard! A really upbeat, energetic rocker. You know, funny story. I could have sworn in the chorus the words being sung were hot diggin it which is a saying kids used to say back in the early 90 s when I was only in 5th grade. One More Time is a really pleasant ballad with memorable vocal lines. It reminds me of the Jefferson Starship song Tumblin. The two songs are really pretty similar to each other. Midnight Blue is foot-stompin music! I *love* the catchy verse melody, and you can seriously tap your foot to the beat of the tune. Highly enjoyable song. You re the Love is a disco song, and while I m not a fan of disco (and probably never will be) I like when rock bands attempt some diverse styles without any fear. Wow... Sunrise. What can I possibly say about this brilliant song? Let me try to explain why I love this track so much. Memories are important to all of us when listening to music, whether we realize it or not. Memories help us appreciate music even more. Music can help us dream about faraway places, and peaceful settings. Music can put us in our own little world, if we allow it to happen. Sunrise is beyond brilliant for a variety of reasons. For one thing, the vocal melody immediately takes me back to when my mom used to drive me to a fabric store in a tiny town in southeast Pennsylvania. That store doesn t exist anymore, but the memories remain, and that s the important thing. Also, the song reminds me of my childhood fasciation of wanting to be an astronomer when I grew older, and having a total blast looking into my telescope and watching the stars in outer space, and dreaming about what living things might possibly be out there. It s not just a childhood memory- it s also a dream I continue to experience with certain songs that allows my mind to open up and think about a really pleasant future for all of us. I love the dreamy verse melody, and the saxophone jam at the end. Sure, it sounds like 70 s music, but that s NOT a bad thing! Breaking in a Brand New Love is an extraordinary love song that reminds me of a popular song Joe Jackson would do five years later. Magnolia Moon took me a LONG time to appreciate, but I finally came around. Brilliant vocals. Nobody Gets Over Lovin You is a magnificent ballad. Once again, let me state I don t care if the music is dated and sounds stuck in the 70 s. To me that just means a music scene can never be repeated again. Forever Like a Rose sounds like Crosby, Stills and Nash a little bit, specifically that popular song called Our House. That s certainly not a bad thing at ALL. The final track is highly unusual in that it has a spectacularly unique vocal section in the beginning of the song before eventually progressing into a highly memorable vocal section that s very normal for anyone familiar with Seals & Crofts career. Overall, I am extremely happy this album is available on CD finally. I can t believe it took this long, but I won t complain, because the point is- it happened!
Finally - Takin It Easy - I ve anticipated this release for years, much as an antsy child waits for Christmas morning. It took way too long to arrive on CD.Favorite amongst all is Sunrise - which seems to have originated in and floated down from heaven. What a treasure this song is.Other favorites include the title track, and the maligned You re The Love.Who really care what style a song is in? Who cares who wrote it or not? If a song sounds good to the listener and becomes a part of their life, you ve successfully created an important song!As we send our children out into the world, do we not do so with the hopes that someone will find them, love them and cherish them?Mission accomplished!
An Overlooked Gem - This album is dominated by the disco (or disco-like) hit You re the Love, which is not your typical S&C song. There is an extended club mix of this too, which would have been a nice bonus track. The high quality of the production gives this song merit but I just can t get over the jaw-dropping sweep of strings that takes over in the middle. It makes me cringe every time. The high marks for this album are based on the other tunes. The title track fairly rocks. Dash s solo ballad One More Time is top notch. Forever Like the Rose is a really excellent showcase for their voices, once again. I do take issue with the other reviewer s take on Magnolia Moon. This is a deeply moving Deep South reverie. I love the keyboard work and Jimmy s vocal phrasing. And the lyrics fascinate with just the right hint of abstract meaning. Someone is being idolized and we don t know why. I also love the minor key guitar intro to Tribute To Abdu l Bah a and the unabashed devotion in the melody. This is an album to savor and reveals more with each listen.
past their commercial prime, but still a high quality album - In a sense, Seals & Crofts 1978 album Takin It Easy is the proper follow-up to 1976 s Get Closer. However, in between those two, the 1976 live album Sudan Village was released, as was the 1977 One on One soundtrack which Seals & Crofts were significantly involved in.By the time Takin It Easy was finally released, it seems that the record buying public had lost a lot of interest in the duo. Compared to the several gold-selling albums that preceeded it, Takin It Easy was a commercial disappointment, peaking at (coincidentally enough) number 78 on the Billboard album charts. One gets the sense that even during the recording of Takin It Easy, there was concern of how Seals & Crofts would be received in the midst of the changing musical climate, and there are some clear attemps at keeping up with the times . The most notorious example is the disco-fied Top 20 hit You re The Love, which Dash Crofts himself claims that he Hated it!, that s a somewhat understandable, albeit harsh and unfair critique, because it s not really THAT much of a disco tune, and beyond that, the song is upbeat, insanely catchy, and downright FUN. They also take a half-hearted stab at a New Wave-ish rocker with the album-opening title track--it s a passable tune, and it was a minor hit in its own right, but the guys don t sound like their hearts are really in it, and the result feels forced. Note that neither of these two songs were at all written by the duo (You re The Love was written by David Batteau and their producer Louie Shelton).Apart from the two aforementioned singles though, Seals & Crofts basically stick with the tasteful soft-rock approach of their 76 masterpiece album Get Closer, and they offer up a bunch of great songs in the process. The Dash Crofts vocal spotlight One More Time is a sublime ballad with a somewhat hard-to-define appeal--it seems a tad schlocky on the surface, sort of like it s waiting to be resurrected for American Idol (again, it wasn t at all written by the duo), but Dash totally puts it over with his fantastic vocals, which, in typical fashion, are commanding yet mellifluous at the same time, plus to be fair, the melody is really gorgeous, and the harmonious intro will have you instantly thinking, Whoa, who put on The Beach Boys? (it s not them, but those ethereal harmonies sure sound like prime Beach Boys, definitely a compliment). Likewise, the epic, philisophical ballad Sunrise has a load of atmosphere with its swirling electric piano and synthesizer textures, and it features an excellent saxophone solo from Jim Seals. The bouncy Breakin In A Brand New Love is an absolutely brilliant pop-rock song, the kind of thing that s a joy to rediscover and gets you thinking, Geez, why wasn t this a huge hit? Forever Like The Rose is another one of their great, heartstring-tugging ballads along the lines of Don t Fail.Of the remaining tracks, Midnight Blue is quite good, with its moody, minor-keyed, country-blues feel, but it s somewhat annoying due to the overwrought, melodramatic story-song lyrics. Nobody Gets Over Lovin You has a somewhat curious blend of tormented lyrics with an upbeat-sounding tune, and Jim hits a great vocal climax on the song s fade. Magnolia Moon is a pleasant low-key ballad, if rather forgettable. Likewise, the 5+ minute album-closer A Tribute To Abdu l-Baha , though again loaded with atmosphere, and obviously very much from Jim & Dash s hearts, just fails to stick in the memory even after repeated listens.On the whole, I wouldn t quite rank Takin It Easy at masterpiece level, but any fan who seeks this album out definitely ought to get a lot of enjoyment out of it. Thanks to Wounded Bird Records for finally getting it out on CD.