Recorded a full two years after
Blood On The Saddle's debut record,
Poison Love demonstrates tremendous growth in terms of cohesion and coherence. The group still has a punky energy, but it frequently sounds more like one of the better guitar pop bands of the mid-'60s--
the Five Americans or
The Bobby Fuller Four, say--rather than like a bunch of punks who stumbled into a country roadhouse (which is what it sounded like on its first album).
Annette Zilinskas, the band's best vocalist, is given more microphone time, and
Greg Davis almost seems to have learned to sing harmony. The rough edges aren't all smoothed away, of course, and they still sound as though they might break into a double-time version of "Ghost Riders In The Sky" any minute, but that's their charm.