Naturally (Reissue)

Album Review

Three Dog Night kept up its reputation for putting other artists' songs on the charts with Naturally, one of the group's finest offerings. With Hutton, Wells, and Negron sounding amazingly tight and fluid, they took their soft rock dynamics and mixed them with an abundance of hooks and harmonies to produce three Top 20 singles, eventually earning the band a gold disk. The fresh-sounding "One Man Band" hit number 19 in December of 1970, followed by Three Dog Night's most acclaimed tune, the Hoyt Axton-penned "Joy to the World," which spent six straight weeks at number one, and Russ Ballard's "Liar," which peaked at the number seven spot only four months later. But Naturally's energy stretches far beyond the album's hits, mainly because Three Dog Night managed to carry the spirited groove and boundless, unconfined feeling of the late '60s into the next decade with most of the songs on this album. The peace-and-love aura of past hits like "Eli's Coming" and "Easy to Be Hard" shows up in tracks like "Sunlight" and "Heavy Church," while the remaining cuts are just as forceful, utilizing the trio's bare vocal power to produce some rather eloquent yet intoxicating music. With the help of Jimmy Greenspoon on keyboards and Mike Allsup's guitar work, songs like "I Can't Get Enough of It," "Fire Eater," and "I've Got Enough Heartache" keep the album's liveliness afloat by lending some carpeted instrumentation to the front-and-center vocals. The rest of the album is often disregarded because of the strength of Naturally's hits, when in fact this is one of Three Dog Night's most well-rounded contributions.