new monkees record is out. meh.

Good Times!, the Monkees' 50th anniversary reunion album is out. My thoughts can be summed up as "meh."

You can read my review on Amazon, along with the comments by others, or below without other people's comments.  It's the first serious review I've written on Amazon, and the first review of any sort in ten years. I write my reviews under the name Hobart DelFoogy. Long story. Don't ask.

As of now, there are 38 reviews on Amazon. 34 of them are five-star. Three are four-star. One -- mine -- is three-stars. And, apparently I touched some nerves. People love "Me & Magdalena," which I think is incredibly boring. And, of course, the other reviews are full of comments about how this album is just perfect! Wonderful! They still have it! I kind of get it -- the album was released today, so the reviews that are up are, by and large, written by fans. They all want to love this album, just like I do. And there's enough here for fans to hang their hats on. It is, indisputably better than Justus or Pool It!, which were the Monkees prior two reunion albums. But it's not as good as Dolenz Jones Boyce and Hart (the 1976 abortive reunion) or "That Was Then, This is Now," the 1986 single.

And, while it's not a bad album, it's not particularly memorable.

Anyway, following is the text of my Amazon review:

I want to like this. I really do. But it's really just kind of meh. The best track, "Whatever's Right" by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, has all the hallmarks of a Boyce and Hart song, except it's just not as good as the sum of its parts. Just as "Teardrop City" sounded like a second rate retread of "Last Train to Clarksville," this is a second-rate retread of "Teardrop City." Now, that makes for a good track (which is a tribute to how good Boyce and Hart were as a songwriting team), but not great. Similarly, the title track sounds good at first, but is just not memorable. 

And that's the good stuff. The album has plenty of mediocre material, including "She Makes Me Laugh," "You Bring the Summer" and "Wasn't Born to Follow" which have some pleasant melodies and decent harmonies, but are more Archies than Monkees. Add a star or a star and a half to my assessment if that's a good thing. 

In order to make this a complete Monkees album, they went to the vaults and found a track ("Love to Love" with Davy Jones' vocals, did some remixing and additions (or whatever) and put it on here. It's kind of reminiscent of how the Beatles put "Free As a Bird" and "Real Love" on the Anthology albums in order to include Lennon. This is better because, well, "Love to Love," doesn't suck the way those Beatle tracks did. But on the downside, this isn't actually a new song. "Love to Love," or at least some versions of it, already appear on various compilations. I guess it's true that they made some tweaks so this is a new version. But listening casually, nothing new pops out at me. I guess someone more devoted can step in and tell me what I'm missing. 

Finally, there are a couple of really bad tracks -- ""Me & Magdalena," for example, is simply sleep inducing. 

Bottom line? There's some stuff that's pretty decent but nothing really memorable. I suspect that, within a week, this will be fading from my mind. 

EDIT: In the review above I said that "You Make Me Laugh" and "You Bring the Summer" were mediocre. In retrospect, that was unfair. They're both good tracks. But they're not great. They have catchy melodies and harmonies. But what they lack is a memorable hook like what we heard on "Last Train to Clarksville" or "Pleasant Valley Sunday." That's arguably an impossibly high bar to set. Take it for what it's worth.

I should note that the edit is a good representation of one aspect of my evolving relationship with this disc. When I first heard "She Makes Me Laugh," I was really optimistic. Then I kind of soured on it, realizing that it doesn't have a truly great hook. Now I'm kind of really liking it. I think I nailed it in the edit. Good track, but not great.