put it together with precision. What makes the song so irritating after repeated listenings (I've never seen a volume-raiser become a station switcher so quickly) are the affectedly funky singing by Johnston and backup and the shallowness of the song itself. "Ohohoh, listen to the music," and the rest of the things-are-getting-better-day-by-day lyric would wear down even the most optimistic AMer after two or three weeks of hourly exposure, and, once you get past the nice guitar chording and double drumming, there isn't much music to explore. Like all the music of the Doobie Brothers, it has its attractions, but you shouldn't ask too much of it.
The Captain and Me is the best of the group's three albums; it's greatly superior to the last, the overdone Toulouse Street, from which the single was taken, and it's better played, arranged and produced than the first LP, The Doobie Brothers, which had the best material. The Doobies have become an unusually polished recording group with an identifiable style: paired acoustic and electric rhythm work by Johnston and Pat Simmons, with Johnston adding well-placed lead lines for tension-building, a dense but never ponderous rhythmic punch provided by drummers John Hartman and Michael Hossack and bass player Tiran Porter, and, above all, the chugging rhythm, the slick, trebly Johnston lead vocals and group harmonies.
The first two tracks are variations on "Listen to the Music," with those syncopated lines and dumb lyrics (We all got to be loved..." and "Without love/Where would you be now?"), and there's a third variation later on. There are a couple of quieter tunes by Simmons: one, "South City Midnight Lady," a rather pretty whore-with-a-heart-of-gold song in country-rock dress, the other, "Clear As the Driven Snow," in which the group adds wind sound effects and jingle bells in an attempt to evoke a mood that's already amply provided by a lovely Johnston guitar solo. There's also an ugly high-energy track complete with shrieking, echoed harmonies, a Redbone-"Witchy Woman" takeoff (this may be a new genre), and the title song, a more lyrical version of the standard Doobie rhythm number.
In the two best tracks here, "China Grove" and "Without You," the band changes things around by using full, ringing electric chordings instead of the usual acoustic and low-volume electric rhythm, and by keeping the lead singing rough a
