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Year of Sunday by Seals and Crofts (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Year of Sunday
  • Group name: Seals and Crofts
  • Year: 1971
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Warner Bros. Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: “G” written on top left of album, indicating that my father owned it
  • Buy it on Amazon: $5.19

Year of Sunday by Seals and Crofts

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I have never listened to this record, but it will be my third by Seals and Crofts. The previous two were:

What I expected

Soft rock.

What it was actually like

When I Meet Them had much more of a country sound than I anticipated, with good vocal harmony, and was pretty lively. I thought it was the best song on the record. Springfield Mill also was pretty country, with some fiddle, but it was not as good a song.

Parts of Antoinette had an interesting sound, perhaps from a Spanish style guitar, or even oud, and High on a Mountain had some electric guitar parts that I liked.

Sudan Village, for some reason, sounded like a calypso song. Last time I checked, Sudan was not in the Caribbean, but hey, I’m just a Geography Bee winner.

Cause You Love was easy listening crap, and pretty representative of most of the rest of the record.

The worst song was certainly the title track Year of Sunday, which was slightly Oompa Loompa and had some truly awful lyrics, such as:

Along came Moses
Gave the world a push
Climbed upon a mountain high
He got the Ten Commandments from a burning bush[1]
And put together his first tribe

And also:

And then time passed, soon the dark clouds
Came and covered up Mohammud’s sun
But the young Báb, down in persialand
Came to tell us of the Promised One

Good grief. I don’t mind religious music, and some of it is actually really good, but trying to shoehorn the latest hippy fad religion that you discovered last month into your pop record is hopelessly lame[2].

Grade

2/5: weak, but I was able to listen to the whole thing

References

References
↑1 Umm, no. The burning bush story is in Exodus chapter 3, while the Ten Commandments story is in Exodus chapter 20 – those are two completely different stories that were set at completely different times and different places. Did these illiterates even bother to crack open a bible? Obviously not.
↑2 And by the way, Bahá’í people are wonderful, and I think there should be more of them.

Summer Breeze by Seals and Crofts (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Summer Breeze
  • Group name: Seals and Crofts
  • Year: 1972
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Warner Bros. Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: “G” written on top left of album, indicating that my father owned it
  • Buy it on Amazon: $11.89

Summer Breeze by Seals and Crofts

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

The only time that I’ve ever listened to a Seals and Crofts record was last May, when I reviewed their “greatest hits” compilation, on which I only recognized one song, which is also the title track for this record, Summer Breeze.

What I expected

Soft rock, easy listening.

What it was actually like

I was thinking that I didn’t like the title track Summer Breeze because I could only remember the mind numbing chorus part, but then when it came on, it was ok. I still think it would be better as a punk song, though.

In general, most of the songs on Summer Breeze weren’t bad at all, with the exception of Advance Guards, which sounded like a children’s song.

Seals and Crofts harmonize pretty consistently, but more by singing the exact same note than when Simon and Garfunkel do it at complementary notes. I guess there’s a reason why Simon and Garfunkel are so widely known, while I struggle to name a single Seals and Crofts song besides the one I knew from their “greatest hits” compilation that is also the title track of this record.

Say was a bit more of a harder rock song, and I liked it more than most of the others, and Fiddle in the Sky was a bit more country, and maybe the best on the record.

Mostly, though, these were pretty boring soft rock songs.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

Greatest Hits by Seals & Crofts (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Greatest Hits
  • Group name: Seals & Crofts
  • Year: 1975
  • Number of discs: one discs / two sides
  • Collection: Selman

Greatest Hits by Seals & Crofts

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard of Seals & Crofts, either individually or as a group, before now.

What I expected

Folk rock.

What it was actually like

It was soft rock and, to my surprise, I actually did know it – well, I knew one song, Summer Breeze, which I was sure had been used in countless movies and maybe television commercials, and may or may not have been a mainstay on classic rock radio, back when I used to listen to the radio in the XX century.

So that song was fine, but given that this was billed as a “Greatest Hits” record, I don’t exactly see how Seals & Crofts are not just a one-hit wonder that put their only hit on a record with a bunch of other recordings that are totally serviceable but don’t stand out in any way.

Grade

3/5

Buy it