More than likely it just slipped by under the radar - Miller and Co. never had much of a profile in the U.K. and Rolling Stone, the most likely source through which we’d have been apprised of the album’s existence, was a hit and miss affair in the distribution and circulation departments as far as Queensland was concerned. More than likely the Sunday Truth had detected the presence of long-haired hippie free-love dope-smoking propaganda on the news stands again. They tended to be big on that kind of thing.
In any case I negotiated a reasonable price and a couple of days later found myself sitting down to digest another Steve Miller Band offering. That happened close to forty years ago, so perceptions may have changed over the years, but from the opening Little Girl to the concluding title track it’s definitely up there with the best of the preceding three albums.
Little Girl, while straightforward in the lyrical department is full of instrumental nuances and inflections that are several thousand kilometres removed from Miller’s later more-or-less boogie-by-numbers. Could have been the sort of single that’d add a touch of class to the charts and while you wouldn’t have expected it to sell millions could have added a bit of light and shade to the Top 40. Even better is Just A Passin’ Fancy In A Midnite Dream, a Miller/Sidran composition with a surging beat behind a throaty vocal from Miller.
The tempo picks up with Miller’s Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Round, largely drum-driven, with a touch of the call and response about the vocal line, which again mightn’t be intoning the most philosophical analysis of society you’ve ever heard but it works.
Baby’s House, a Miller/Hopkins co-write, provides a welcome change of pace largely built around layered vocals, Hopkins’ piano and Sidran’s organ with nice echoes of the slower material off the earlier albums. Clocking in a tad under nine minutes, it’s magnificently understated.
I’ve heard plenty of versions of Motherless Children over the years. Clapton’s riff-driven offering and Jeff Lang’s up-tempo cover are two favourites that spring to mind. Miller slows it right down, keeps it simple and the result works as well as any of the others and better than many more formulaic versions. Electronic touches. tinkling harpsichord and tasteful guitar work from Miller, demonstrating that he can play. As in so many cases the secret isn’t in the notes you play but in the ones you leave out.