Although I've never been a huge fan of Burt Bacharach the recording artist--bland is still bland even if you're the composer doing the arranging of your own instant or soon-to-become classics--the producer/composer/arranger has always impressed me, and that's in part what makes this album enjoyable in spite of a few lapses (like really inane singing on a few tracks that I still can't stand to hear; some missing songs I'd have preferred over a few included). There are little things scattered throughout that impress, too, like the ending of "This Guy's in Love With You." Then there's the mix, which is not discrete in the way we generally desire in quadraphonic sound, and yet it works because it also defies the notion of a live recording having to be 'music in front with a little audience sounds, with mainly audience and ambiance in the rears.' And, finally, it ends with what I consider to be the Bacharach/David masterpiece. "What the World Needs Now is Love" is so simple in its words you wonder (as with so many Bob Dylan songs) how no one ever quite made it come out so directly that the World had to take notice. But more than that, the sonorous, almost lamenting brass arrangement Bacharach created might still be the best counterpoint to something like Charles Ives' "The Unanswered Question"--except here, Bacharach didn't find an answer, only an emotion approaching desolation but with a whisper of hope (which is how Jackie De Shannon sang it back in '65, as a representative of humanity, really, for Bacharach & David's usual muse--Dionne Warwick--was too dynamic and forceful to make the words work; she was simply too forceful--and forced--a singer for such a humble plea).
Overall, a '7' with high marks for interesting mix and some very interesting arrangements...but this kind of pop is not for everyone (though it is the father of such grandoise nonsense as Celtic Woman or the execrable Josh Groban. Bacharach's singers here are utterly anonymous in the fashion of Ray Conniff and the Mike Curb Congregation, and sometimes get in the way, but at worst they're silly, not offensive).
ED
