Why Can't We Be Friends?

iTunes Review

The World Is A Ghetto might be War’s best-selling and most iconic album, but Why Can’t We Be Friends is the band’s defining moment. By 1975, the hippie dream that had birthed War was a distant memory, the shag carpet Seventies were in full swing, and the band had settled comfortably into its role, and its decade. “Don’t Let No One Get You Down” envelops the listener in its Latin-tinged vibes, while “Low Rider” is rock solid yet slightly goofy, a leftfield hit that somehow attained immortality. “In Mazatlan” and “Leroy’s Latin Lament” put the band’s Chicano’s constituency on proud display, while “Heartbeat” has a gripping, low-end groove to match anything in a career full of low-end grooves. The silly shuffle of “Why Can’t We Be Friends” resolves War’s hippie aspirations to their Seventies inheritance; the tune is fun-loving and freewheeling, yet also a send-up of the Woodstock ideals that the band once held in such serious regard. Why Can’t We Be Friends presents a musical vision that is pure Seventies and marks the end of an era — an era that belonged to War.