The sound of yesteryear is brought to life once again on this compilation, with its different styles of music, ranging from cabaret, via pop and jazz to country.
The opening song, Look What They Done to My Song, Ma, is in a pop/cabaret style, sung in both English and French, and even though it’s followed up by the simple pop tune, Never Ending Song of Love, you get a clear picture of the span of the group.
I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing, is very typical of an early 1970`s song, but it gave The New Seekers their first number 1 hit, actually it became number 1 in 22 countries, selling more than 7 million copies. It also made way for The New Seekers to enter the Eurovision Song Contest in 1972 singing, Beg steal or Borrow, one of the United Kingdom’s best entries.
All time fan favourite, Circles, from 1972, adds a new angle to The New Seekers, with a song which has a bit more depth in the lyrics. This is followed by the sparkling, jazzy tune, You Won’t Find Another Fool Like Me. The last critics had to give in; The New Seekers was more than just another group of pop singers.
The press didn’t like Pinball Wizard, one of The Who’s classic rock hits, but the fans did, and even Pete Townsend from The Who congratulated them for it, and it’s funny to hear The New Seekers rocking.
I Get A Little Sentimental Over You is a real sing along song, while The Nickel Song is one of those small but lovely songs that are so rare in the present world of music. Goodbye is Just Another Word is a lovely laid back tune, and Good Old Fashioned Music, takes you to the world of country music.
Martin and Coulter, the men behind Congratulations and Puppet On a String wrote I Wanna Go Back for The New Seekers, but it didn’t really peek, and the experiment with acappella singing as in Anthem, doesn’t really work either. It’s So Nice sounds to my ears like an ABBA light song, and in Come Softly to Me, the harmonies are clearly influenced by the Beach Boys. There’s nothing bad about these two songs.
The absolute highlight on the album comes in track 16, When There’s No Love Left, a heart moving ballad, close to a hymn. That song really shows the quality of The New Seekers, and in my opinion, it should have been that song representing the United Kingdom instead of Beg Steal or Borrow at the ESC 1971, it would have swept aside Europe.
Now we take a gigantic jump, from the 1970`s to the new The New Seekers songs from 2009. It`s Been Too Long, and I Can’t Breath plug the gap between the old and new of The New Seekers very nicely. When you hear Lifetime in Love, it’s just like being back 35 years. The music is of course a bit different, more modern if you like.
The only little setback on the album is the two medleys, Blackberry Way and Hallelujah. In my world, medleys work best when they are performed live.
To end this compilation, we get to hear the never before released 1982 song Just Another Lesson for the first time. A nice and simple pop ballad, in the classic Smokey style.
It has been a pleasure to listen to this 75 min long album, it brought back some long forgotten memories, and I highly recommend it, not only for the 45+ generation, but for all due to its softness and easy listening tunes, and its music picture of the 1970’s. It even comes with a 2 page booklet about The New Seekers.
