4.5 out of 5 Stars!
Harmony is probably my favorite overall Three Dog Night album.
Despite the album’s age, the sound quality still holds up well, and the songs the band selected for Harmony were generally above average.
With tracks such as “Murder in My Heart for the Judge” and Hoyt Axton’s “Never Been To Spain” (both sung by Cory Wells, which his iconic vocal performances claimed as his own), the band’s own song entitled simply “Jam,” along with “My Impersonal Life” (what an evil/metal sounding guitar tone!) and Joni Mitchell’s “Night in the City” (both sung by Danny Hutton), and Stevie Wonder’s “I Never Dreamed You’d Leave In Summer,” Paul William’s “Old Fashioned Love Song,” and the track “You” (all Chuck Negron masterpieces), this is probably one of the band’s “heavier/rockier” efforts.
The only thing that kept me from rating Harmony a perfect 5 Stars was that this is the first album where the band started to shy away from their trademarked “swapping” of lead vocals. The singers, it seems, began to enjoy being the lone vocalist in the spotlight, selecting their own tracks and getting away from the three-singer-team effort. Therefore, the two final tracks on Harmony—”Family of Man” and “Peace of Mind”—were the only songs that reverted back to the “older” days of trading vocal leads throughout the songs (although “Jam” is borderline), and it was a sign of things to come when the band’s cohesiveness eventually vanished.
Despite that one criticism, however, I believe, had the band continued on this heavier/rocking road, they might have retained their “cool” factor a lot longer instead of gaining an undeserved future reputation of being nothing but a “singles’ band.”
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Zap Niles 