Hat Trick

Performer: America
Producer: Dan Peek; Dewey Bunnell; Gerry Beckley
Distributor: Gotham Distributing Corp.

Notes: America: Dan Peek, Dewey Bunnell, Gerry Beckley. Additional personnel: Joe Walsh (guitar); Henry Diltz (banjo); Tom Scott (saxophone); David Dickey (bass guitar); Hal Blaine (drums, percussion); Chester McCrackin (congas). America's Hat Trick has the distinction of being the album that contained the first song that the band sang that wasn't theirs. Written by Willis Ramsey, the syrupy "Muskrat Love" only went as high as number 67 on the singles chart for America, but the Captain & Tennille managed to take it all the way to number four only three years later. The rest of Hat Trick failed to garner any hits and is a slight disappointment after the success of their self-titled debut in 1972, which harbored the band's first number one hit in "A Horse With No Name," and after Homecoming, their satisfying follow-up. Hat Trick peaked at number 28 on the album charts, faltering mainly because the songs lacked the cordial folk-rock melodies and mindful songwriting that prevailed on the earlier releases. "She's Gonna Let You Down" and "Rainbow Song" are the album's best cuts, but banal offerings such as "Green Monkey," "Willow Tree Lullaby," and "Molten Love" have Bunnell and Peek straying off course, sounding stale and musically feeble. The unsuccessful repercussions that evolved from Hat Trick both commercially and otherwise were not overlooked by the band, and they rebounded with 1974's Holiday, an album which yielded hits in "Tin Man" and "Lonely People," which both made Billboard's Top Five. ~ Mike DeGagne

The first half of the 1970s was the heyday of introspective songwriting and close-harmony singing. The band America was at the forefront of the commercial end of this movement, releasing a string of singles that dominated the radio for years. Following their debut smash, "Horse With No Name," a Neil Young-derived, hallucinatory song-story, America scored again and again with singles and a series of records whose titles for some reason all began with the letter "H." Despite the group's indelible association with soft rock, America's understated pop found an unlikely new legion of fans in the '00s indie world.

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