The Association - Stop Your Motor (CD)

All Music Guide

The Association was three years beyond their last Top 40 hit when they made this, their final album for Warner Bros., in 1971. There they are on the cover in '70s regalia, all sporting fashionable facial hair, none but Jim Yester attempting a smile. But the lush pop music inside, dominated by their choral sound, is strictly 1967, and the times, as they will, had changed. The only thing that's unfortunate about the failure of this album is that it contained a wonderful version of Jimmy Webb's "P.F. Sloan," a song in which a great pop songwriter in decline ponders the fate of another great pop songwriter who has disappeared entirely (as of 1971, that is), sung by a great pop group facing its own disappearance. Irony upon irony, and a good tune, too.

- William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide