Cowsills (28 Great Songs)

Featuring "The Rain, the Park, and Other Things," this debut album by the Cowsills really isn't half-bad mainstream late-'60s pop, with a heavy Mamas & the Papas fixation. It's not nearly as good as the Mamas & the Papas, of course, and doesn't stand up to in-depth listening -- nor are they saying anything quite as profoundly refreshing and personal as what the Mamas & the Papas conveyed on their best records. But it is pleasant, and it's also easy to hear how doing Beatles tunes for four hours a night at clubs had a profound effect on whatever musical impulses the group had, and there were worse places than that to use as a jumping off point. Echoes of the prettier and less daring parts of Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's abound in the best of the harmonizing here, and also in some of the brass and percussion, and the guitar flourishes on numbers like "Pennies" (which could easily have been a hit). Everything is also decidedly middle-brow and middle class in its sensibilities, very family friendly even in the relatively safe trippiness that colors the mood of numbers like "River Blue" -- this was sort of sunshine pop for teens from stable middle-class homes. Musically, it all recalls the two Boyce & Hart LPs and, even more so, the Monkees' first two records -- it's not as smooth or accomplished as either of the latter, though the presence of a fair number of band originals and the lean sound of the core group give it a slightly less contrived feel than the Monkees' records. ~ Bruce Eder