Natural Progressions is a disastrous case of supporting musicians forming a band, building an album around their own material and becoming lead singers. Though ex-Eagle Bernie Leadon and Michael Georgiades are competent guitarists, neither is more than a passable harmony singer. Their songs, written in the standard Southern California harmonic idiom with an occasional touch of jazz, have no melodic distinction or structural momentum. "Time spins like the karmic wheel/Endless secrets waiting to reveal" from Georgiades' "Rotation" is typical of the cosmic maundering to which both men are prone. Perhaps the songs wouldn't seem quite so pathetic had substantial arrangements been built around them. But they weren't, and as a result, Natural Progressions is minimal in the saddest sense of the word. (RS 249)

STEPHEN HOLDEN