Southern Harmony Musical Companion
The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion may not have had the huge chart hits of its debut, Shake Your Monkey Maker, but it's a more versatile and muscular album. This is a very soulful release with a lot of piano and female backing vocals on several tracks. This is also the rare album where the deep cuts are the better ones overall although the songs that made it to radio were strong in their own right. Those radio hits and AOR tracks include the driving "Sting Me", the ballad "Thorn in My Pride", the mid-tempo rocker "Hotel Illness", and the slow and grinding "Sometimes Salvation". The first single "Remedy" is catchy as sin and full of hooks and should have been a hit on the level of "Hard to Handle". However, it's the deeper cuts that really shine here as the emotional "Bad Luck Blue Eyes Goodbye" may be the best slow track they've ever done while the band churn out three wicked rockers in "Black Moon Creeping", "No Speak No Slave", and "My Morning Song", the latter of which has some great slide playing and a great chorus that borders on gospel. The closing version of Bob Marley's "Time Will Tell" is on par with the original thanks to its great vocals. All told, in a very consistent catalog of music (even their "worst" album, Lions, is worth hearing), The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion is arguably their best disc.
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