Holiday (CD - 1974)

America fully recovered from Hat Trick's dismal results with 1974's Holiday, with producer George Martin's influence rubbing off on both of the album's Top Five singles. With "Tin Man"'s wonderfully polished soft pop ease and the wispiness of "Lonely People," the band was able to recapture the same formula that put early hits like "A Horse with No Name," "I Need You," and "Ventura Highway" in the Top Ten. The difference with "Holiday" is that their light and breezy melodies and attractive folk-rock sound filtered through more than just the two hit tracks on the album. "Another Try," "Old Man Took," "In the Country," and even the cliché-sounding "Baby It's Up to You" contain a sturdy enough mixture of guitar and harmony to rise them above inessential filler, at least as far as America's material is concerned. Cuts like "Mad Dog" and "Hollywood" suffer somewhat from trite lyrics and a seemingly hurried compositional formula, but this album as a whole ascertained that the group was definitely showing their true potential once more. The album that followed Holiday, 1975's Hearts, showed even stronger improvement, taking the overly catchy "Sister Golden Hair" to number one and scoring a Top 20 hit with the Sunday morning frailty of "Daisy Jane." ~ Mike DeGagne minimize