Any
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band fan who thought the smooth soft rock of 1978's
The Dirt Band was a fluke was proven wrong by the following year's
American Dream, which took the template of its predecessor and improved it with a streamlined production and some very strong material. Chief among these, of course, was the title song, a winningly polished take on
Rodney Crowell's clever "American Dream" that became a hit, climbing all the way to 13 on the pop charts and thereby establishing the band in the public's eyes as the soft rock act they'd become. It's a brilliant single, one of the best Californian soft rock songs of its era, and
American Dream the album delivers at least on the level of sound -- sonically, it's a sleek and appealing collection of mid-tempo pop songs, ballads, and lazy jams. It's the latter that hurt the momentum of the album; although the instrumental "Jas'moon" works better than "White Russian" on
The Dirt Band, there are some really silly good-time numbers -- "New Orleans," "Happy Feet" -- that deflate the mellow vibe of the record (as does the reggae-fied cover of "Wolverton Mountain" that closes the LP on a sour note). Though these are stumbles, they don't hurt the record, since the rest of
American Dream glides by on its smooth surfaces -- all electric pianos, slick guitars, saxophones, and glistening polish -- and songs as light but appealing as "In Her Eyes," "Take Me Back," "Dance the Night Away," "Do You Feel the Way That I Do," and "What's on Your Mind." This won't win over the fans lost on
The Dirt Band -- it would be some time before they returned to the progressive country that made their reputation -- but this is another small late-'70s soft rock gem. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine