Less heavy-handed than the debut, it also weighs less, sometimes threatening to float away into jangly pop-rock—which is fine with me; frankly, I wish Parsons and Hillman both had taken more interest in that side of their work. GP had been kicking “Lazy Days” around for years before putting it on record here, and it sounds it—if Gilded Palace of Sin strove for the strains of 1938, this one eases into those of 1967. “High Fashion Queen” is sneering but effective, though the FBB—bros indeed—wallow in garden-variety rock misogyny that includes a zippy cover of Dylan's "If You Gotta Go," not one of his more charming moments.
They beat the Byrds to “Farther Along” by a year, though the
two versions are largely interchangeable, and Parsons fumbles slightly on the closing
“Wild Horses,” failing to bring Jagger’s depth of longing. Still, this brief excursion into a sort of power-pop country charts a direction not otherwise taken for this group--when Hillman dug "Down in the Churchyard" back out several years later on a solo album, it lumbered in at twice the length and half the impact.
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