Humble Pie - Town and Country (CD)

All Music Guide

Anyone who thinks of Humble Pie solely in terms of their latterday boogie rock will be greatly surprised with this, the band's second release, for it is almost entirely acoustic. There is a gently rocking cover of Buddy Holly's "Heartbeat," and a couple of electrified Steve Marriott numbers, but the overall feel is definitely more of the country than the town or city. "The Sad Bag of Shaky Jake" is a typical Marriott country ditty, similar to those he would include almost as a token on each of the subsequent studio albums, and "Every Mother's Son" is structured as a folk tale. On "The Light of Love," Marriott even plays sitar. Peter Frampton's contributions here foreshadow the acousticbased music he would make as a solo artist a few years later. As a whole, this is a crisp, cleanly recorded, attractivesounding album, totally atypical of the Humble Pie catalog, but well worth a listen.

- Jim Newsom, All Music Guide