Crawdaddy: the "Buffalo Springfield" review

Crawdaddy has dug out its review of the Buffalo Springfield debut album:

You have to be into it, however; chances are you won’t even like it on first hearing. All the songs seem to sound alike, and the group sound is quite thin. These are valid criticisms. There are certain samenesses in the Springfield’s material, and if you hear them on one of their rare off nights, you’ll be quite bored. But what the Springfield do is rise above these samenesses, employing beautiful changes and continually fresh approaches within their particular framework. The more you listen to this album and become familiar with it, the more you’ll hear in each song. As for the thinness, the production job on this LP is sadly amateurish. The bass is under-recorded, the drums misunderstood, and the guitars tend to tinkle when they want to ring. On stage, the Springfield have a deceptively full sound: they’re not as loud or as solid as the Airplane, but because every note each man plays is so perfectly directed—like the Popsicle stick construction—they project a richness and a fullness which is more satisfying than one could possibly imagine. It’s a delicate balance, however, and it wasn’t achieved in the recording studio. This is partly for production reasons—poor miking, poor mixing, and the wrong studios for Springfield’s sound—but it’s also because the group wasn’t completely on when they did these sessions. Much more can happen to these songs on a good night than did happen in the studio.

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