The Dave Clark Five had actually broken up a few months before this album appeared in the U.K. near the end of 1970, not even gaining American release. Its failure to appear in the U.S. might not solely have been due to the group's failure to land any big hits there since 1967, as it's not truly a proper album, but actually a collection of tracks from various sources that verges on a hodgepodge. More than half of the tracks had seen release on 1967-70 U.K. and/or U.S. singles, none of them substantial U.S. hits, though their cover of the folk-rock standard "Everybody Get Together" got to the Top Ten in Britain. In a weirder twist, the country twanger "I Am on My Own" had been released way back in 1965 on the American LP
I Like It Like That, and the pretty exciting instrumental "Five by Five" certainly sounds like a mid-'60s outtake (though it had been used as a B-side in 1970). For the most part, though, the album collects bits and pieces from the era in which the
DC5, to be blunt, became a pretty uninteresting band without many connections to their original style, other than Mike Smith's underrated soulful lead vocals. The songs explore various avenues of mainstream late-'60s British/early-'70s British pop, including "Yellow Submarine"-style whimsy ("Live in the Sky"); good-time music with
Creedence Clearwater Revival and
Beach Boys influences ("Here Comes Summer"); and soul-pop balladeering ("Julia" almost sounds like
Procol Harum trying to go middle-of-the-road). But there aren't many good tunes, unless you count "Everybody Get Together," which was done much better by
the Youngbloods on their U.S. hit version. ~ Richie Unterberger