Sometime before you read this review, America's album will have been recalled by Warners, their hit single, "A Horse With No Name," added to the tunes, and the album then returned to the stores. And, by the time you read this, it will be hard to get a copy. Sold out, probably, if the constant airplay of several cuts is any indication. Not bad for a first album.

The object of all this attention is a group formed by three Army brats living in England who manage to sound like either Neil Young or CSN&Y, depending on which cut you're listening to. America, as they're known collectively, has evidently stockpiled a lot of knowledge in their young lives (18, 19 and 20 years) to be as facile as they are with close harmonies, tight arrangements and clever lyrics. They must also have clocked a lot of listening time around the old stereo, 'cause when you finally get over being stunned at how much they sound like Young & Co., you realize there are lots of other influences there, too, lurking underneath that most obvious one. (Kind of like, "How many Indians can you find hidden in this picture?")

A third listening revealed that the clever lyrics are, for the most part, only that. Mick Jagger doesn't have to move over just yet. But, I'm sure that time will provide Messrs. Bunnell, Beckley and Peek with ample opportunity and wherewithal to be "profound." For the moment, they can relax on catchy rhymes and rhythms as in "Sandman" -- the one that's been stuck in my head since the first time I heard it:

I understand

You've been running from the man

Who goes by the name of the Sandman.

He flies the sky

Like an eagle in the eye

Of a hurricane that's abandoned.

One could hear a whole lot worse than that lyric from people who've been around a whole lot longer. America obviously has a lot going for it; and if they're this good now, what will the next album be like?

- Daisy Buchanan, Words & Music, June 1972.

Bonus Review!

What have we here, O my sisters and brothers, but an album that serves as living proof that if you release 88 albums every month, at least one of them will make the charts and thus merit the attention of your humble record review staff?

America, three real young men whose only concession to a combined 15 years of English residence is one wrinkled Rod Stewart-style velour jacket of the sort you don't need to go to England to get any more, are strictly for those who find Crosby & co. inaccessibly cerebral.

On the strength of an extremely (a) lame, and (b) unashamedly Neil Young-imitative hit single, "A Horse With No Name," they've quickly become as big with whatever's left of the inwardly cleancut segment of the teen audience as Black Sabbath have with the reds/revolution/Ripple crowd.

Having failed to qualify as a teenager in each of the last five years, I am probably grossly unqualified to comment on them in a fair and objective fashion. If you must know, though, I find: their vocal harmonies engagingly pretty, if samey, their individual lead singing manneredly sensitive/vulnerable and a little noxious, their tunes occasionally mildly pleasant, and few of their words as militantly nauseating as, "In the desert you can remember your name cos there's no one there for to give you no pain," although mawkish sentiments and banal, pimply hyperboles about therein.

You'll note with delight that, in spite of the above, the production is alone sufficient reason to give this platter a whirl or two -- were Ian Samwell to take to billing himself the Glyn Johns of the mostly-acoustic set, I, for one, would not so much as smirk. America is definitely worth hearing, if not listening to.

- John Mendelsohn, Rolling Stone, 4/27/72.

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