Three Dog Night - Harmony [Clear]

Clear vinyl suits Three Dog Night's Harmony, a sparkling showcase for the band that turned other people's songs into radio gold.

Released in 1971, Harmony arrived at the peak of the group's hitmaking run, produced by Richard Podolor and built around three distinctive lead singers. Danny Hutton, Chuck Negron and Cory Wells passed the microphone between them, and the band had a sharp ear for overlooked songs, often by writers who were not yet household names. Here that ear delivered two Top 10 hits and a set of covers that rewards a closer look.

Never Been to Spain, written by Hoyt Axton, rolls in with a slow, swaggering build and Wells's gritty lead. An Old Fashioned Love Song, from the pen of Paul Williams, is pure velvet, all piano and Negron's honeyed tenor. Beyond the singles, the album reaches for Joni Mitchell's Night in the City and a Moby Grape deep cut, while Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer takes a Stevie Wonder and Syreeta Wright gem into lusher territory. Elsewhere, all three singers take turns at the front, trading lines like old friends finishing each other's sentences.

It is warm, polished early-seventies pop rock with a soulful backbone. Stacked together, those voices still sound like nothing else on the radio dial.