The 5th Dimension: Soul & Inspiration

THE 5TH DIMENSION: SOUL & INSPIRATION (1974)

1) Soul & Inspiration; 2) Harlem; 3) The Best Of My Love; 4) My Song; 5) Hard Core Poetry; 6) No Love In The Room; 7) House For Sale; 8) Somebody Warm Like Me; 9) Salty Tears; 10) I Don't Know How To Look For Love.

This album starts off just fine, with two of the band's finest performances from the meager mid-1970s — a solid, fiery rendition of The Righteous Brothers' ʽSoul & Inspirationʼ, with Billy and Marilyn trading lead vocal duties and bassist Joe Osborn providing the song with a tough, gritty skeleton underneath all the orchestral layers; and immediately afterwards, a cover of Bill Withers' ʽHarlemʼ that smartly capitalizes upon all the funky promise of the original — perhaps the band inevitably loses some of the song's irony and subtlety in the process, but with their harmonies, wild strings and wah-wah guitars all over the place, they make the song kick significantly more ass than it did while chained to Bill's vision.

Alas, that's about it: once the highlights are done with, the usual curse of the 5th Dimension — dependence on mediocre songwriting — kicks in, and the rest of the album consists of largely interchangeable ballads and R&B workouts that waste the vocal talents of the band and the ins­trumental professionalism of the Wrecking Crew behind them. You're covering the Eagles? Fine, but couldn't you at least have picked some of their better songs, like ʽWitchy Womanʼ or some­thing, rather than the generic MOR ballad ʽBest Of My Loveʼ? And of all those other tunes, the only one that still sticks in my head a bit is ʽNo Love In The Roomʼ, a dark dance number with a good vocal build-up, though still very run-of-the-mill in terms of arrangement (ominous strings, proto-disco bass, all the works).

In fact, the record is so heavy on softness and sentimentality that the only proper R&B number here, besides ʽHarlemʼ, is ʽMy Songʼ, a composition by Rich Cason written at the crossroads of Funkadelic/Parliament and Stevie Wonder, but without the mad energy of the former and the melodic genius of the latter. At least they try to get a groove going here, and Billy is sincerely trying to fire it up; on such easy listening numbers as ʽHard Core Poetryʼ (courtesy of the Lambert & Potter songwriting duo), ʽHouse For Saleʼ (courtesy of Larry Brown, a Motown hack),  ʽSomebody Warm Like Meʼ (courtesy of Tony Macaulay who'd given them ʽ(Last Night) I Didn't Get To Sleep At Allʼ in 1972), there's nothing happening at all, although, of course, all of these songs can be used as relaxing background muzak. But even considering how many people in the world treat all music as no more than relaxing background muzak, and how much this record follows the standard soft-pop formula of the mid-1970s, the fact is that Soul & Inspiration tanked just as miserably as its predecessor, missing its huge core audience by a mile. Again, not recommended for anybody except huge fans of Billy's and Marilyn's vocal talents — which, as usual, are formally on open display, but still do not prevent me from an overall thumbs down.