Family - Anyway (70)

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01 - good news bad news
02 - willow tree
03 - holding the compass
04 - strange band
05 - part of the load
06 - anyway
07 - normans
08 - lives and ladies
09 - today
10 - song for lots
11 - today (edit)

Family - Bandstand (72)

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1 Burlesque
2 Bolero Babe
3 Coronation
4 Dark Eyes
5 Broken Nose
6 My Friend the Sun
7 Glove
8 Ready to Go
9 Top of the Hill
10 The Rockin' R's [*]

Now this was more like it.

Kicking off with the wickedly salacious "Burlesque," Bandstand was the best of the late Family recordings.

For a band that for the most part eschewed riffs and hooks, both are in plentiful supply here.

More important, by the time of Bandstand's release, Family had reconciled the war between their art-rock and hard rock tendencies; that is to say, there is more of the latter and less of the former.

So, the record doesn't have the internal stress of their earlier releases, but what it does have is Chapman shouting like he could take on the world and Whitney playing like he must have when he formed the Farinas in 1962.

A corker from the word go.