The debut album of Nils Lofgren's trio, Grin, brilliantly closed the quartet of albums that had begun with the Neil Young/Crazy Horse collaboration, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, and had then progressed through Young's After the Gold Rush (the intense moodiness of which had been colored by Lofgren's gorgeously muted piano playing) and the Young-less Crazy Horse (on which Lofgren, with two of his songs, had been present).

Like its three companion pieces, Grin exuded a rich Wild West aura; largely responsible for this aspect were a couple of songs called "Outlaw" (on which both Young and Crazy Horse were appropriately present) and "Pioneer Mary." In this second song, Lofgren made explicit what Young and Crazy Horse had only hinted at: that this Western landscape they had all been moving through wasn't the seemingly authentic frontier of the Band, but the set of a Western movie. A third song, "Take You to the Movies Tonight," expressed the idea that by going to a picture show, one could change his life around, at least for a few hours:

If you're gonna be lonely, be it tonight.

If you need a friend, need one tonight.

Put your Saturday night dress on,

Don't call me at home 'cause I'm gone.

I'll be right over

Gonna take you to the movies tonight....

By taking his girl to the sanctuary of the picture show, the singer was carrying out a rescue. So the mature acceptance of "Pioneer Mary" ("It's only a movie") was counterpointed by the innocent hopefulness of "Take You to the Movies Tonight."

Through these representations of the movies as unreality, Lofgren turned the album into an examination of the fundamental conflict between the real world and the world of the imagination. His other songs served to illuminate other aspects of that conflict, particularly in the sexual ("See What a Love Can Do," "18 Faced Lover," "Open Wide") and romantic-utopian ("We All Sung Together," "If I Were a Song") areas.

This preoccupation with fantasy in its various shapes made Grin a sort of aural daydream. It worked not only because of Lofgren's remarkable little songs, but also because of his reedy, fallen-choirboy voice, full of innocence and worldliness at the same time, and set off by bassist Bob Gordon's husky, mature singing. At the time they made the album, Lofgren, Gordon, and drummer Bob Berberich were still teenagers; with an album as sophisticated as this one for openers, Grin might be really amazing, after gaining some experience and maturity.

Well, they haven't made it yet. 1+1 is a well crafted album, put together much more painstakingly than Grin, but it has little of the first album's charm, and none of its substance. It seems more an exercise in flashy production than an album of songs with a distinct identity.

The fault lies not with David Briggs' production, but with 1 of gren's inability to put all that crisp sound to some dramatic use. His songs seem intentionally trite in some cases, and intentionally abrasive in others. His vocal reediness can become unbearable when he shrieks, or when Gordon isn't around to lend support and there's not much of Gordon on 1+1, surprisingly. There isn't much of that spellbinding Lofgren piano playing, either.

I still find myself listening to it often–although partially out of loyalty, I suppose–but each time I do, I prepare myself to wince in a couple of spots; the mechanical laughter of a laughing box that closes the "Rockin' Side," and the voice of a four or five-year-old girl singing cutely out of tune that's placed between two tracks on the "Dreamy Side." And when Lofgren sings, "Don't let girls get you down, they're only beautiful ...," or "Have you ever lost a number, it's like losing your mind ...," I have to keep reminding myself that this is the same guy who was on After the Gold Rush and who wrote, "Pioneer Mary," and he must have something up his sleeve. If he does, it's beyond me.

The paradoxical thing, is that, despite all these teeth-gnashing moments, the album is still kind of likable, "Lost a Number" is so melodically sleek that it's hard to resist singing along in the choruses, even with those creepy words, "Soft Fun," a pull-out-all-the...stops production number, scores points for sheer tenacity. "Please Don't Hide" is throbbing, tightly structured rock & roll that could he transferred to the first album without diminishing it. And "End Unkind," with its Gordon-Lofgren alternating vocal and surging, Crazy Horse-style arrangement, is the closest thing on 1+1 to a Western movie song, although its mood is undercut by the laughing box at the end. All ten songs have something positive about them, but nothing seems as fully developed as even the least of the songs on Grin.

Grin's isn't the first follow-up album to be obviously inferior to its predecessor. More often than not, in fact, a performer who's spent half his life getting ready for that first big album finds that he only has a few weeks to get the second one together, from the initial songwriting to the final mixing. Many artists find it destructive to their art to have to work according to a schedule; Lofgren is evidently one of those.

With all its shortcomings, it might be worthwhile to get acquainted with 1+1; Lofgren and his group have huge potential, and it's interesting, if more than a little frustrating, to watch them struggling to pull it out. (RS 102)

BUD SCOPPA