Lynyrd Skynyrd

This is perhaps the second most important record in the southern rock canon (behind the Allman's Eat a Peach). The second offering from the tragically doomed Florida rockers finds Ronnie Van Zant penning songs of uncommon depth and perception showing the trajectory from ruin to redemption and exposing the complicated soul of life beneath the Mason-Dixon line.

This group is frequently compared to the Allman Brothers but it lacks that band's
sophistication and professionalism. If a song doesn't feel right to the Brothers, they work
on it until it does; if it isn't right to Lynyrd Skynyrd, they are more likely to crank up their
amps and blast their way through the bottleneck. They do, however, play a solid brand of
Allman-influenced blues rock, drawing on gospel and other components of sout... More >

Great formula here. When it rocks, three guitarists and a keyboard player pile elementary riffs and feedback noises into dense combinations broken by preplanned solos, while at quieter moments the spare vocabulary of the best Southern folk music is evoked or just plain duplicated. And any suspicions that this substantial, tasteful band blew their best stuff on the first platter should fall in the wake of the first state song ever to make top ten, which will expose you to their infectious putdowns of rock businessmen, rock journalists, and heroin. (Grade - A-)