After taking most of the 1980s off, the Doobie Brothers reunited at the end of the decade and attempted to pick up where they left off, evidently pretending the entire decade hadn\u2019t happened and the world still wanted boogie-rock to which they could drink beer and chill.<\/p>\n
It worked, to a point. \u201cThe Doctor\u201d was a successful single and the tour was a hit as well, beginning the long (and still, as of 2022, not over yet) cycle of nostalgia-filled tours playing mostly the hits to an appreciative, ever-aging audience. Cycles <\/i>was intended for those fans, as opposed to aiming for the pop charts or setting the world on fire, and on those merits it\u2019s a fine, albeit unmemorable, basic rock record.<\/p>\n
Gone is Michael McDonald and his blue-eyed soul, which invigorated and\/or ruined the Doobies in 1976, depending on who you ask. The songs come straight from the Captain And Me\/What Were Once Vices\/Stampede <\/i>era; \u201cThe Doctor\u201d is basically a rewrite of \u201cChina Grove,\u201d and is placed as the first song to hook the curious listener. <\/p>\n
The songs that follow are various shades of decent; \u201cSouth Of The Border\u201d has a great guitar solo and a solid beat with a touch of \u201980s drums about it, \u201cNeed A Little Taste of Love\u201d is another update on an r&b track and \u201cOne Chain\u201d adds some horns, some blues grit and a breakdown in the middle where the percussion and the band\u2019s vocal harmonies take center stage. There are several ballads too, none of which make an impact; one wonders if McDonald would have made a difference singing \u201cI Can Read Your Mind.\u201d <\/p>\n
There are very few stylistic tweaks that colored the original Doobies albums, making the album a straight-ahead reunion disc that gets the sound right, for longtime fans, while adding the slightest touch of modernity for the time. Those touches, of course, sound hokey and dated now, as evidenced on the drums and songwriting of \u201cToo High A Price,\u201d the only instance where perhaps the band is aiming for AOR territory. <\/p>\n
Put simply, fans will find a few decent moments here, but very little that they\u2019ll return to, and those who only know the band from their hits aren\u2019t missing much. Cycles <\/i>was necessary to re-establish the band as a touring entity, but it doesn\u2019t really accomplish much else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":34574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6972],"rating":[11204],"class_list":["post-46421","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-doobie-brothers","rating-rating-c-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46421"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}