Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
First Hall & Oates Platinum!, August 13, 2001
On Daryl & John's early RCA releases, they made it a point to put the hits on side one and the experimental songs on side two. You'll hear plenty of both with songs like "Do What You Want, Be What You Are" which is a classic, and their first number one song "Rich Girl". Other songs that deserved hit status are "Kerry" and "London, Luck & Love". Best from the 'experimental' side include "You'll Never Learn" and "Room To Breathe".Daryl wasn't too happy with the production (which they took care of when they started producing themselves) and you can see what he means if you play "Room To Breathe" from this and from "Live Time". It's a fine rock album overall and has one of the best album covers you'll ever see.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Bigger Than the Both Of Us, June 22, 2006
(4.5 Stars)
This is criminally out of print..criminal because there's a lot more to be found on here than the pop hit "Rich Girl".
Oates pens two of H&O's prettiest hooks on the ELO-ish "Back Together Again", as well as "Crazy Eyes". He also turns in another fantastic song with the mysterious "You'll Never Learn". Oates was definetely on his A-Game here.
And Daryl's tunes are as good as you'd expect from him. The aforementioned "Rich Girl" is a great pop/soul number with an instantly catchy chorus. He's hauntingly beautiful on the minor-key ballad "Do What You Want, Be What You Are" (which may have been a minor hit, I'm not sure), and he even rocks it out on the stomping, guitar-driven "Room To Breathe" (which has some great bluesey riffs).
There's more, though. "Kerry" is a fantastic mid-tempo pop/rocker; brooding, but really catchy at the same time. He also works some mandolin into the uptempo "London Luck and Love", which has some cool droning guitar effects throughout..
And "Falling" alone justifies paying $20 for an out of print CD. It starts off quiet (electric piano + voice), and dynamically reaches a memorable guitar solo at the end. They diddle around with a synthesizer for the lengthy outro (which probably sounded super futuristic and spacey at the time, though a bit dated now). But the actual song is phenomenal, with chord changes and lush production that would make their buddy Todd Rundgren smile with glee..
(As a somewhat useless factoid, there's a title track to this album..only it's one of those "Houses of the Holy" situations where the band finished the album before the song, so you have to buy their next album, "Beauty on a Back Street" to find it)
Not sure why this hasn't been remastered. It's one of my favorite Hall & Oates albums, and there's really no filler to be found.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Creative Energy used Through Out, April 8, 2000
**** and a half stars, rich girl (which began the road to fame for H&O), the romantic ballad "Do what you wanna do, be what you are", "back together again" was a minor hit, and the sleeer hit the great "room to Breath", Awesome rocker!, "kerry" and "falling" are nice and innocent songs, but don't flow with the rest of the album.a Nice starting place for hall and oates fans!
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