专辑简介

by Tim Sendra

The Buffoons were one of Holland's premier vocal groups of the '60s and early '70s. They had quite a few hits singles between 1967 and 1975, and Singles compiles 26 of them. Influenced by the Beach Boys, the Four Seasons, and Sagittarius (whose "My World Fell Down" the group covers), the group began life as an orchestral sunshine pop group with lush vocal harmonies featuring falsetto leading the way, dramatic Wall of Sound-style musical backing and complex Baroque melodies. They never were quite able to pull it off with any degree of success. Their harmonies were a little on the square side as were their songs. For example, their version of "Sunday Will Never Be the Same" is scarily prim compared to Spanky & Our Gang's original, and their version of "My World Fell Down" shows none of the sonic adventurism that makes the original so incredible. The falsetto is also very stiff, sometimes crossing over into unlistenable. When the group was at its best, as on its late-'60s tracks "The Radio Song," "The Bus," and the excellent "My World Is Empty," it was as good as some of the third-tier practitioners of the orch-sunshine sound. By the time the early '70s turned to the mid-'70s, the group began to introduce country-rock influences and removed all the already nearly negligible interesting aspects from its sound. Songs like their insipid cover of Ritchie Valens' "My Girl Donna" and the smooth "Arizona" no longer sound like songs made by a group, more like a singer with backing vocals (male and female) and anonymous musicians. Their covers of "Let It Be Me" and "To Know You Is to Love You" are elevator fodder, smothered in lame strings and annoyingly sweet vocal choruses. The entire last third of the disc follows that formula and ruins the half-decent material that came before it. The only spark of life comes on the peppy "Silver Queen (Surfer Queen)," which sounds like a good Four Seasons track from the same era. The group started off as Holland's answer to the Idle Race and ended up as the Dutch version of the Anita Kerr Singers. Only rabid sunshine pop completists need to bother investigating the Buffoons.