Bittersweet

The Chairmen of the Board were a particularly idiosyncratic soul group: two lead singers, beneficiaries of some of Holland Dozier Holland’s best post-Motown songs, and their sound up until their psychedelic Funkadelic-played opus Skin I’m In was pretty much a continuation of HDH’s Motown production-line style, as is the case with this, their second album. Songs like the anti-war opener “Men Are Getting Scarce,” the gloriously jubilant gospel-soul hybrid “Working On A Building of Love,” or pop-soul hit “I’m On My Way To A Better Place” are funky, but they’re not funk, they’re the same innocent/melancholy pop-soul of peak-Motown HDH dressed in new 70s clothes. Elsewhere, country and blues stylings also contribute to a sense of musical nostalgia and while it lacks the bigger hits of their earlier albums and indeed the far-out experimentation of their next, it still has treasures and pleasures within.