Firefall, s/t (1976)

In the soft-rock-sterility songwriting contest between Rick Roberts and Larry Burnett, we all lose. There’s a faint trace of the core Byrds here, with Chris Hillman picking up a co-writing credit (with Roberts and Stephen Stills) on the modestly captivating “It Doesn’t Matter,” but really Michael Clarke—who mostly does little more than stay in time—is the main link. According to the back cover, he hasn’t aged too well; his lost years were apparently not spent at the practice kit. Otherwise it’s so-soft-it-melted rock all the way through, with songs about love, dolphins, and Cinderella (on the latter of which, Burnett wins some kind of alltime-dick award for shunning a woman he got pregnant and sending her on her way; stay classy, ye gods of MOR FM radio). Props for burying the big hit single “You Are the Woman” deep on side 2, I guess. I like their later album art more, and arguably the albums too.