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Poco Seven suffers from the absence of Richie Furay, whose title songs, "A Good Feelin' to Know" and "Crazy Eyes," provided the conceptual and stylistic directions for the group's last two excellent albums. While Poco's vocal trademark on Seven remains unmistakable, its texture is thinner. The album's eight songs and their arrangements are fair to good, at best. Paul Cotton's "Drivin' Wheel" opens things promisingly on a note of mystic affirmation, but the cut loses power as it proceeds. Rusty Young's "Rocky Mountain Breakdown," which follows, is a spirited little square dance, the album's most appealing (and also shortest) cut. Tim Schmit's "Just Call My Name" and "Skatin'" sluggishly fill up the rest of Side One with uninspired electric riffs and dragging tempos.

The four ballads that comprise Side Two are dull. Cotton's "Faith in the Families" is a lightweight bossa nova, and Schmit's "Krikkit's Song (Passing Through)" and Cotton's "You've Got Your Reasons" lumber through inappropriate string charts. Among the four, only Cotton's "Angel" shows flashes of Poco's characteristic vocal and instrumental incisiveness, but they are too few and far between. Without Furay, Poco seems trapped by lethargy and indecision, the group's conception of "orchestrated country" sadly unrealized. (RS 162)

STEPHEN HOLDEN