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What do you even say about the 5th Dimension, a group with no personality?
That's not... really meant to be a burn--honestly, maybe an odd sort of compliment. The 5th Dimension, as near as I can tell, were basically the 1960s version of S Club 7, in that they were a prefabricated pop group that was very, very good at doing what they were told. And their countercultural image was entirely image--when people complained about fake hippies in the years to come, this is the shit they were talking about.
And yet... the fact that these guys and girls were so malleable also made them perfect as a playground for songwriters. And so the music of 5D (as I call them) was largely shaped by which outside songwriters they chose to work with and/or cover.
Now, these guys recorded the work of a lot of different songwriters, but there are two that really notable: Laura Nyro and Jimmy Webb. Anyone who has been paying attention to may reviews at all knows that Laura Nyro is literally my favorite artist of all time, and so you'd think I'd like a group that was basically a Laura Nyro cover band for a while (like the way the Hi-Fi Set were with 松任谷由実 [Yumi Matsutoya]). And yet... it is astounding how consistently these guys manage to ruin Laura Nyro songs. I think the problem is that their MO was to take Ms. Nyro's incredibly complex compositions and simplify them, and in so doing they tended to completely miss the point of those compositions. Although they were way more commercial successful with them than Laura ever was, so what do I know.
Jimmy Webb, though... Jimmy Webb was actually a lot like Laura Nyro in that he wrote these very beautiful, very grandiose capital-r Romantic dramas... but unlike Laura Nyro he was completely straightforward about it. Like, way too straightforward. So 5D does a lot better with him!
Anyway, it's not just Nyro 'n' Webb. 5D did a lot of Bacharach/David numbers too!
I feel like I was too mean to these guys :(
Up, Up and Away (1967)
8/10
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
JIMMY WEBB PERCENTAGE: 45%
LAURA NYRO QUOTIENT: 0
REVIEW:
Really goofy earnest 60s folk-pop, but honestly also very endearing. "Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon" is just about the dumbest thing you can ever say, and also that song sounds like it needs to get sampled in a shibuya-kei track yesterday, but neither of those are bad thing. There are two Jimmy Webb songs ("Pattern People" and "Rosecrans Blvd.") on side B that are really good! "Learn How To Fly" is also really good but it isn't by Jimmy Webb but it might as well be! And so is the semi-a-cappella "Poor Side of Town". Honestly, all of side B is pretty great.
RANKING: 3 of 14
The Magic Garden (1967)
8/10
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
JIMMY WEBB PERCENTAGE: 92%
LAURA NYRO QUOTIENT: 0
REVIEW:
Hey, turns out these guys were okay, as long as they kept far, far away from the Laura Nyro songbook!
What we have here is a genuine concept album, courtesy of Jimmy Webb, a guy who occupies the center of a Venn diagram of Jim Steinman, Diane Warren, and pre-divorce Carole King. Here, Webb is taking us on tour of every happenin' pop style in the late 60s: you've got Beatles/Byrds-style janglers, big dramatic ballads, bachelor pad cocktail jazz, harpsichords, sitars, etc. Heck, there's even a soul song!
I gotta say, though: I think I described Weezer's lyrics somewhere as "incel-tastic", and that's certainly the case here too. I think what's really going on is that Jimmy Webb is giving us an artful, yet unreflective portrait of the male romantic id, which is fine I guess, except I've lived that, I don't want it in my pop music.
RANKING: 1 of 14
Stoned Soul Picnic (1968)
6/10
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
JIMMY WEBB PERCENTAGE: 9%
LAURA NYRO QUOTIENT: 2
REVIEW:
"Sweet Blindness" by Laura Nyro is an amazing song. Its overdriven take on bubblegum pop perfectly captures the feeling of being a teenager on the loose in a city with nothing on your mind by ecstasy and fear. The cover of "Sweet Blindness" that's on this album trades all this for oompah bass, honky-tonk piano, and sub-Lawrence-Welk cheese. Like, it's so bad! How did they manage to ruin a good song so thoroughly?
And what's crazy is that the rest of this album is actually pretty good! Some cuts sound like 70s variety-show backing fluff, but some are really pretty--I'm especially fond of the last two. Heck, they actually do pretty well with the other Eli and The Thirteenth Confession track they do! So who knows with these guys, is what I'm trying to say.
RANKING: 6 of 14
The Age of Aquarius (1969)
5/10
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
JIMMY WEBB PERCENTAGE: 8%
LAURA NYRO QUOTIENT: 2
REVIEW:
My dad was always fond of telling me that, while people remember the cool 60s of Woodstock and Motown, there was also the dorky, square 60s which no one remembers. Well, these guys bridge the gap! If you weren't hip enough to buy Laura Nyro and Cream records, you could at least listen to some inferior versions here. And if you weren't cool enough to go see Hair, well... I'm sorry, I don't know what to tell you.
(another story about my parents: when my mom was a kid in the late 60s her family went to New York City on vacation and saw a bunch of Broadway musicals, one of which was Hair... except my mom, the youngest child, wasn't allowed to see that one because of the bare breasts. the rest of her siblings got to go, though, and she has apparently resented them ever since. for that and also other reasons)
RANKING: 9 of 14
Portrait (1970)
7/10
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
JIMMY WEBB PERCENTAGE: 12%
LAURA NYRO QUOTIENT: 1
REVIEW:
Ladies, gentlemen, and other personages, it is the god damn seventies. Which means we are in the Silver Age of Pop, and everything basically sounds like it did in the 60s, only louder, woolier, and more bombastic while also being less well-defined.
And the feeling here is that the 5th Dimension here is really leaning into the whole "socially conscious" angle--the Laura Nyro song they do is "Save the Country", and at one point they literally sing the Declaration of Independence, which reminds me of that one girl I knew in high school who memorized the constitution and used to compete in constitution-memorization contests. That's hilarious! Because a) the 5th Dimension are a little late for that, and b) they're the fucking 5th Dimension, they're basically flower-power Perry Como.
The best songs on here are actually the ballads--Bacharach/David's "One Less Bell to Answer" and Jimmy Webb's "This Is Your Life". The latter kind of sounds like the 5th Dimension trying to be the Carpenters. Again, the seventies.
RANKING: 5 of 14
Loves's Lines, Angles, and Rhymes (1971)
6/10
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
JIMMY WEBB PERCENTAGE: 0%
LAURA NYRO QUOTIENT: 2
REVIEW:
Well, I thought these guys couldn't fuck up a Laura Nyro cover worse than they did with "Sweet Blindness", but I was mistaken! Because, like, okay, New York Tendaberry, right, that's Laura's darkest and most tangled and impenetrable and oneiric album, but then right in the middle you've got "Time and Love", which is a big singalong bubblegum pop song about how you just gotta keep on keepin' on. But the thing about "Time and Love" is that it's about the encouraging lies we tell ourselves to keep ourselves keepin' on, and how those can weigh us down and crush us if we aren't careful. See, for example, the outro, where Laura layers five different pop choruses on top of one another to the point that each becomes inaudible. God she was amazing.
But anyway, the 5th Dimension take it literally. So now it's just a dumb bubblegum pop song. What the fuck. (the other laura nyro cover, "he's a runner", is actually okay).
This is as good a time as any to talk about how this band has three lead singers, and, well, Billy Davis Jr. is fine, but honestly Marilyn McCoo and Florence LaRue are both terrible. How did the notably white Laura Nyro manage to have so much more soul than both of them? At least Florence LaRue used to be hot.
Anyway, the best song on here is the title track--I think the label got the message that the soaring jazz-pop number "One Less Bell to Answer" was a big hit and asked for more of those. This one was written by a lady named Dorothea Joyce, and it's her only major songwriting credit, and also please enjoy her website and what a massive rabbit hole it is.
The rest of this album is not that interesting. "Every Night" is pretty I guess.
RANKING: 7 of 14
Live! (1971)
4/10
⭐⭐⭐⭐
JIMMY WEBB PERCENTAGE: ######
LAURA NYRO QUOTIENT: NaN
REVIEW:
I was told I didn't have to do this one, but I kinda wanted to. And... that was sort of a mistake. See, I had this idea that 5D's Broadway-ish side would actually lead to them really shining live. But the thing is...
So you know the track where Florence LaRue introduces the medley of Laura Nyro covers? Well it's absolutely astounding how wooden and passionless she sounds up there--she reminds me of the fucking... TikTok AI text-to-speech voice or something. And that wouldn't really be a problem, except then she launches into a cover of "Stoney End", and she still sounds like that. And that song is supposed to be a cry of anguish! Which brings me to maybe my main point: the 5th Dimension were an incredibly theatrical band who were all terrible actors.
Otherwise, well, this is a double live album from the 70s, so it's kind of boring and inessential. Even if they don't pull it off all that well I kind of respect their attempt at doing "Eli's Comin'" like a Cab Calloway number, and some of the Jimmy Webb songs really hit, but this album is at its best when it's just doing straightforward soul ("I Want to Take You Higher", "Together Let's Find Love"--the latter is begging to be sampled in an east coast hip hop song). But then again you can't really fuck up early 70s soul.
Can you??? These guys certainly do try!
RANKING: 10 of 14
Individually & Collectively (1972)
4/10
⭐⭐⭐⭐
JIMMY WEBB PERCENTAGE: 0%
LAURA NYRO QUOTIENT: 1
REVIEW:
"Individually" is right--there's no particular songwriting voice to this album, and so what you end up with is a very uneven hodge-podge. Mostly this is an album of treacly 70s soft-soul for the painfully square and earnest ("Tomorrow Belongs to the Children", "All Kinds of People"--not Bacharach's finest moment). But then you've got goofy lounge-bossa-nova like "Sea & Sky", or "Half Moon", which is as close as this band will ever get to funk. Best song, though, is also the most straightforwardly pop--the band's last real hit, "(Last Night) I Didn't Get To Sleep At All". Oh, and "Blackpatch" is the last Laura Nyro cover these guys ever did, and it might also be their best one, by which I mean it's very faithful and they didn't fuck it up too bad. And they add a surprisingly adventurous sax solo to the end!
Oh also, this album is notable because this is the one where they let the two other guys do lead vocals. Ron Townson (the apl.de.ap of the group) sings a queasy falsetto lead on "Band of Gold", and Lamonte McLemore (the Taboo of the group) gets a verse on "Blackpatch". Actually... the 5th Dimension was a group that started out aping the aesthetics of the counterculture before revealing themselves to be a soulless, mercenary pop outfit that would do anything for a hit--while making some amazing pop music in the process. I know I compared them to S Club 7 earlier, but maybe they're actually the 1960s Black Eyed Peas!
RANKING: 8 of 14
Living Together, Growing Together (1973)
8/10
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
JIMMY WEBB PERCENTAGE: 0%
LAURA NYRO QUOTIENT: 0
REVIEW:
The 5th Dimension makes a jazz album? And it's good?!?!?!?
Now, admittedly, jazz is a bit of a strong term--this is very poppy, and honestly very cheesy, vocal jazz balladry. But, like, jazz is in there! A lot of these honestly feel like beautiful, intricate torch songs, and it makes you wonder why these guys were fucking around with other types of music for so long. I mean, if they had tried this approach back in the 60s they might have actually been a good Laura Nyro cover band! My favorite cut is "Ashes to Ashes", a quirky, sprightly number that sounds kind of like something from Japan's contemporaneous New Music scene. But seriously, this whole album is really good!
RANKING: 2 of 14
Soul & Inspiration (1974)
4/10
⭐⭐⭐⭐
JIMMY WEBB PERCENTAGE: 0%
LAURA NYRO QUOTIENT: 0
REVIEW:
And now we come to a problem that will reoccur several times throughout this discography, but which I honestly wasn't expecting to encounter this early: you can't stream this fucker anywhere, at least not in America.
And I have no idea why! Because, like, it's not like this was an embarrassing attempt at relevancy by an aging, severely diminished version of the band that everyone would sooner forget (those come later). This is 5D in their ostensible prime! The only reason I can think of is that apparently they were having a fight with their label when this came out, and I guess maybe it's not on streaming as, like, punishment. So the upshot of it is that I could only actually track down six out of these ten songs.
And... I don't really feel like I missed out on much. This is 5D aiming squarely at the 70s housewife market, so expect lots of gooey easy-listening ballads sung by McCoo and... not much else. And now keep in mind, I like gooey 70s easy-listening housewife ballads, but these are just bad examples of the form. Like, 5D have tried to be the Carpenters before, but now they're really trying, and it's just embarrassing how much better these songs would be if Karen were singing them. Although I do like "I Don't Know How to Look for Love"! That one's a toe-tapper!
EDIT: In the interim period between when this review was written and when it's going up here this album has, in fact, made it to streaming. And... I was completely wrong about it! It's not just gooey easy-listening ballads, much the opposite, the "soul" in the title is not a joke, this is 5D's attempt at getting some actualy R&B cred. "Harlem" and "My Song" even verge on funk!
I was, however, not wrong about the fact that it's not very good.
RANKING: 11 of 14
Earthbound (1975)
3/10
⭐⭐⭐
JIMMY WEBB PERCENTAGE: 50%
LAURA NYRO QUOTIENT: 0
REVIEW:
The last two albums didn't have any hits, 5D got dropped from their label, and so the new strategy was: bring back Jimmy Webb! It didn't work.
And that might be because Jimmy Webb wasn't actually really trying--by '75 he had moved on past the need for these guys. So his originals are kind of bland, except of course for "Walk Your Feet in the Sunshine", a sitcom-theme-sounding song that you think is going to use feet as like a metaphor for taking it easy and not letting life get you down, but then turns out to actually literally be about feet. "Take a Load Off Your Feet" by the Beach Boys is also like that--it's crazy that that's the premise for two pop songs.
The other, non-Webb songs are all rock covers, and they're also mostly forgettable, although "Moonlight Mile" is my favorite Stones song and so I do appreciate its presence. And the vibe they are going for is kind of Stevie Wonder synthed-up funk-pop, but it just doesn't sound good. Oh, and I prefer to refer to this album by its original Japanese title, Mother 2.
That... that joke never gets old.
RANKING: 13 of 14
High on Sunshine (1978)
3/10
⭐⭐⭐
JIMMY WEBB PERCENTAGE: 0%
LAURA NYRO QUOTIENT: 0
REVIEW:
After Earthbound flopped Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr. left the group to go... I guess not solo because there were two of them, but you know what I mean. If you want me to be a completionist and add their stuff to this list that'll be five more bucks. Anyway what we were left with was a Florence LaRue-led 5D, and she's been touring with a revolving door of singers pretty much since. Check Wikipedia if you want to see the absurd list of people she tried to replace Marilyn McCoo with!
And as well as touring the nostalgia circuit, 5D Mark II here also made some albums! But they really don't want you to know about them. These things have been pretty effectively damnatio-memoriae'd, to the point that I can't track down a good stream of this anywhere. I eventually found a YouTube playlist with most of these songs on it, but I still have never heard "Magic Man" or "Can't Get You Out of My Mind". Is the former a Heart cover? We just don't know!
That portion of this album I could hear... well, it's a Philly Soul album. And that's a sound I always thought these guys should do! It kinda works, too, at least when they stick to it, such as on the title track or "Turn My Love Away". But frustratingly they often don't, hence the vomitous "Skyway" or the failed attempt at traditional pop "You're My Star". Oh, and the new guys Florence hired can't sing at all, and Florence could never sing, so that really brings it down too.
EDIT: ~Herbieguy9 sent me the two missing tracks. "Magic Man" is not a Heart cover; it's a slow jam sung by a guy with a truly terrible voice. My opinion of this album has not changed.
RANKING: 14 of 14
Star Dancing (1978)
7/10
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
JIMMY WEBB PERCENTAGE: 0%
LAURA NYRO QUOTIENT: 0
REVIEW:
Okay, well, guys, this was all you had to do. I spent pretty much all of the last album going, it's 1978, why the hell isn't this a disco record, but guess what, they have fucking delivered! Because this is some fucking DISCO! We need you to go dance, we need to get together and boogie-woogie, woogie-boogie! Radar love is here, the star of stars! My chiffon is muerta!
Like, I don't even care that these guys can't sing anymore, this is just the most goofy grandiose 70s orchestral dance music and I love it all. The title track is weird little radio play with laser noises that's trying to ride the coattails of Star Wars, and I mean these guys are no Meco but it's great, every song on this is just as silly and they are all great.
Well, I mean, objectively speaking they're kind of mediocre. But they are fun and that's what counts. Oh, and like the last album I couldn't track down some of these songs--I have no idea how "Hold Me" or "You Are the Most Important Person in Your Life" go. They're probably ballads, given the song titles. I don't feel like I missed much.
EDIT: Thanks to ~Herbieguy9, I can report that neither of those songs are boring ballads! "You Are the Most Important Person in Your Life" is disco-rock and "Hold Me" is disco-latin-jazz. Pretty cool!
RANKING: 4 of 14
In the House (1995)
4/10
⭐⭐⭐⭐
JIMMY WEBB PERCENTAGE: 0%
LAURA NYRO QUOTIENT: 1
REVIEW:
If you thought 5D tried to bury their 70s albums, check this out: I cannot track this down anywhere. And I mean... do you blame them? This is Florence LaRue and four randos she found in a Home Depot parking lot, doing covers of old soul standards (plus some 5D re-records, hence the non-zero Nyro score). The production is, like... I feel like they wanted to get Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis but they didn't have enough money so they got the random teenager who was doing a summer internship at Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis's accounts' office. And I base that off of the one song from this I could actually track down, which was "All You Ever Do Is Dial". And you know what? It was okay! Dorky and bouncy and inessential but also not bad.
What I did find was this video of prime-era 5D singing "Sweet Blindness" on some 70s variety show with none other than Frank God Damn Sinatra. Which, like, they are using 5D's terrible arrangement but Old Blue Eyes really gets Laura Nyro's songwriting in a way that 5D never did, even though he is clearly soused and also wearing a sequined nehru jacket for some reason. I would dearly love to hear an album of Frank Sinatra doing Laura Nyro covers. Also: Frank definitely slept with either Florence or Marilyn or both after that show. I just know it.
Anyway I feel terrible rating this but I can't not so it gets a 2. Soz.
EDIT: ~Herbieguy9 sent me the whole of this and I gotta say, this really does have all the silly noises of 90s r&b, from bwooOOOw to scrweee! And points to the rerecording of "Stoned Soul Picnic" for sounding like main menu music from a GameCube game. I don't know, honestly I find this shit kind of adorable.
RANKING: 12 of 14
Overall Ranking & Final Thoughts
- High on Sunshine
- Earthbound
- In the House
- Soul & Inspiration
- Live!!
- The Age of Aquarius
- Individually & Collectively
- Love's Lines, Angles and Rhymes
- Stoned Soul Picnic
- Portrait
- Star Dancing (i am just as surprised as you are)
- Up, Up and Away
- Living Together, Growing Together
- The Magic Garden
Of course the above rankings aren't super accurate given how many of these albums I couldn't hear in their entirety. Anyway, stream Eli and the Thirteenth Confession.