Sometimes the anticipation and mystery of the unknown are greater than the reality once revealed. I found this album the same day I found the debut album by The Karroll Brothers, and at this time I mentioned I was pretty stoked about find this particular album. That Karroll Brothers album was a wonderful surprise - this one was a surprise too, but for different reasons.
Let's get a couple of things out of the way right up front. I'm a casual J.D. Souther fan, and I have a couple of his albums and aside from his "hit" "Only the Lonely" they were rather forgettable. However his contribution to the 1988 movie Permanent Record (where I became a fan of Keanu Reeves) "Wishing on Another Lucky Star" is one of the finest pop songs EVER written. So for that alone, I consider myself a fan. Chris Hillman is another guy who I know more of, than I actually know of. I do have one of his albums, that was enjoyable, but can't actually remember any of the songs, but it was enjoyable. For me I remember him more guesting on The 77s "The Lust, the Flesh, the Eyes & the Pride of Life" where he provided backing vocals and played bass. Then there's Richie Furay, who I actually know very little about, other than he was in Buffalo Springfield and Poco at some point.
From a pedigree perspective The Souther Hillman Furay Band was filled with guys who circulated in the top tier of the who's who of rock. David Geffen features prominently in the thank you section as the last one mentioned in large print, and the album was on Asylum, so it's not like the guys were lacking support. The band also included the incredible Al Perkins on lead guitar and pedal steel and dobro. Trouble in Paradise was the band's second album and their swansong.
Of the songs here, it is J.D. Souther who seems to connect more often than not, which may have been simply a function of his hit to miss ration as he wrote four of the album's nine tracks, but truth be told, they're the strongest songs on the album. The album kicks off with "Trouble in Paradise" and is a pretty solid mid tempo song. The problem is that J.D. Souther's voice often bore more than a passing resemblance to Glenn Frey, which could be great or distracting.
Chris Hillman's songs are enjoyable enough while they're playing, but once they're done they're also out of mind too. I wonder if he had pull with the mixing engineer as the bass is pretty far forward in the mix throughout - not a bad thing, just saying.
Considering this was released in 1975, and the other bands in their orbit, thinking of Eagles, or Linda Ronstadt or even America, I'm surprised they didn't lean into the country rock and have more harmonies that played to their inherent strengths - of course as I write this Richie Furay's song "For Someone I Love" is playing and is filled with lush harmonies. Oh well, that'll teach me to write before actually "listening" to the album. To be fair, this was the second pass through before I noticed.
Another song by J.D. Souther "Prisoner in Disguise" is a really strong song, that makes me think it would have been a killer track for Glenn Frey on an Eagles album. It's not like J.D. didn't have great success as a writer for other artists. "Somebody Must Be Wrong" closes out the album and is one of the better songs here, and features both Glenn Frey and Don Henley on backing vocals - sort of like adding a secret sauce that unfortunately highlights the inevitable comparisons another high flying band.
In all the album felt like the whole was less than the sum of it's parts things. The band released a pretty solid if ultimately forgettable album that just felt derivative. There's nothing terrible about this, and it's a decent listen while it's playing (as I finish writing this, I've listened to a few times through, and it gets a little better with each spin), but once done there's not a lot to compel me to play it again, and I suspect given a couple of weeks I won't be able to remember what was on it.
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