Three Dog Night no longer seems anywhere near as offensive as I once found them. Their sole talents are as stylists, mind you, but nowadays it's just plain impossible to get up enough passion to put them down.

From a strictly comparative standpoint, the similarities between Three Dog Night and Uriah Heep are becoming more marked with each group's latest outing, and have now gotten so out of hand that I frequently find myself pondering the possibility of another, industry-perpetrated Masked Marauder hoax. Though they're approaching it from two very, very diverse frames of reference, the fact that both groups are out to create the same identical brand of mechanical Top 40 song is undeniable.

From a sheer sonic standpoint, it appears that Three Dog Night's recorded sound has changed drastically over the last couple of efforts, and has now reached the point where their music is actually punchy. In fact, a couple of things on Cyan (most notably "Happy Song" and "Play, Children, Play") really floored me for a moment or two with their relative viscerality. Even "Shambala," a comparative throwback to the tedious schmaltz that was once TDN's exclusive wont, rocks with authority.

But alas, if in the end there's any distinguishing characteristic about Cyan, it's the incredible similarity of its material, with each song lined up almost as if it had been stamped out by the same cookie-cutter. The production has a decidedly assembly-line smell about it, making it very hard indeed to see how even the most devoted fan of the group is gonna get his rocks off a month after he's bought the album. Sure, there's a few exciting, even emotional moments (usually revolving around the compositions of Mike Allsup, the only group member into writing). But they're approached so rigidly, so predictably, that explaining what makes this album tick is about as much fun as writing the assembly directions for prefabricated houses. (RS 149)

GORDON FLETCHER