The Temptations - "House Party" (1975)

I have a theory that the Temptations and other prime Motown acts of the 1960s are the most immune to criticism of any popular music acts. Not only do pop critics shy away from discussing them in terms of their best and worst material, and how they rank historically, they're not even really part of the conversation. My suspicion is that it's because of how they were presented. No one thinks of the Temptations in terms of albums, but rather in terms of their hit singles, which, like the best of the Motown era, are all immaculate, if by necessity formulaic. It is taken for granted that these were not album-oriented artists (with the exception of artists like Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, who to release great albums, had to break free from the Motown yoke). As a result, bands like the Temptations are largely unassailable, even though their artistic achievements as a whole pale compared to the colorful discographies of a Gaye or a Wonder.

This is all my lead-in to defending my decision to consign a Temptations album to the blue bin. Fortunately, I don't have to defend this one too much because even band member Otis Williams referred to House Party as "a mismatched collection of, pardon my French, shit" (thanks Wikipedia!). The year was 1975, the Temptations' classic style of balladry was no longer in vogue, and the album was a collection of outtakes and leftovers to keep product moving. So perhaps it's not surprising that this particular record didn't turn out very well. Still, I did feel a rare twinge of guilt when I realized that I was not enjoying the music of the Temptations. 

There are a lot of problems here, but the main one is that the Temptations present themselves as a funk band, which just isn't their forte. Although the album starts off reasonably well, I found the instrumentation to be robotic on even the best songs, the production to be muddled, and the vocal performances generally weak and uninspired. There are some decent cuts to be found like "You Can't Stop a Man in Love" and the album closes relatively strongly with a return to their ballad style for the last two tracks. But even on these songs, pretty much the only ones with noticeable hooks and melodies, the performances fail to hold my interest. So although this record is professional enough to avoid being a total disaster, it's still a mediocre album.