Chilly – For Your Love [1978; Polydor]

Early electrodisco marks the debut album from Chilly, which opens with an expansive ~12-minute adaptation of The Yardbirds’ “For Your Love”, rolling out sharp guitar twitching, punchy percussion, and syrupy synth dressing with lush vocal accompaniment. The grooves are given lots of life, as in the songs that follows, and while all seven tracks together come in at just over half an hour, the lavish production-work and high energy of the performances make the album feel bigger than it really is.

Also helping are the swings through uncommon atmospheres for the style, like the slightly cold and plaintive intro to “Dance With Me”, and the switch-offs between the multiple singers. Though things accelerate towards the end, with the last two songs falling under the three-minute mark, there’s still plenty to savor, and the fun ride through the full album does a lot to off-set its brevity.

Here’s an alternate cover.

And another alternate cover.

Con Funk Shun – Loveshine [1978; Mercury]

On their third album, Con Funk Shun (with a line-up of eight men for this recording) fuse soul and pop with touches of disco, funk, and smooth jazz, turning out nine songs with clear melodies, strong vocal harmonies, and firm hooks. Balanced between near-ballads and saucier fare, the band doesn’t give any one song more attention than the next, keeping them all in the ~4-to~5-minute range, and giving few of them much fanfare for their finishes.

Despite that, the care given to the songs is evident, as are the talents of the musicians, with both sides coming across strongest in the little bridges, fills, and quick solos that lend the compact songs a sense of expansion. The music does feel muzak-y at times, but it comes across as the result of the musicians just being too comfortable with the material, instead of being lacking in ideas or enthusiasm. And while the songs don’t really come together to feel like a concerted album, the band hits a steady enough groove to make it an easy ride, if a little bland.

Grown Ups (2010)

Blondie – Parallel Lines [1978; Chrysalis]

With their third album, Blondie produced some of their most enduring hits in the public ear, including “One Way or Another”, “Heart of Glass”, and a cover of “Hanging on the Telephone”, which starts off the LP with a clear showcasing of the post-punk/pop/new-wave blend which fills the album. Bold guitar-work, strong bass-lines, lively drums, and Debbie Harry’s aggressive but enticing vocals are strung together in a dozen songs that are kept to easily-digestible size, never breaking the four-minute mark.

On the lyrical side, themes of emotional distance, neuroses, and longing are dressed up in upbeat presentation, with jolts of keyboards and electric piano dropped in occasionally for extra kick.
Experimentation with infusion of other styles, like the disco rhythms of
“Heart of Glass”, helps keep things energized, and in spite of the
album’s brevity, it feels just full enough to leave listeners wanting
more.

The choruses are firmly established without getting overused, and the band shows an all-around thorough grasp of how to make the songs accessible without undue compromise of the content, poppy though it is.

Goblin – Zombi [1978; Cinevox]

For the international version of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, Dario Argento contracted Goblin to write a score, which brought a distinctly proggy (and Italian) vibe to the American film. Electric guitars and an assortment of percussive instruments join the keyboards and bass through a wide range of styles, with tribal chanting and ragtime piano riffing probably being the two furthest points on the score’s mood spectrum.

More standard prog rock does appear, as with the fairly quick “Zaratozom”, and it’s with these pieces that the band seems most confident, though they don’t falter on the steps outside their comfort zone. There’s also a bit of a weird split between full ‘songs’ and what are essentially looped cues, but the jumping about with styles (there’s even a take on country western at one point) helps minimize the dissonance of those shifts. On the down-side, the band’s apparent urge to show off how wide a range they could make the music cover leads to it feeling more like a style demo reel than a cohesive score, and the diversity of the tracks ends up running into itself too often for any individual piece to end up particularly memorable.

Here’s the alternate cover art.

The cover art used in Japan.

In France.

In Germany.

For an Italian reissue.

Another Italian reissue.

Yet another Italian reissue.

And the 2018 remastered reissue.

Various Artists – The Best of Disney, Volume Two [1978; Disneyland]

In this second and final installment of the Best of Disney compilation series, the selections come from live-action and animated films (plus one track, “Disco Mouse”, from the New Mickey Mouse Club TV series), with little flow or linkage between the picked tracks. The audio quality is better than that of the first in the series, though there’s still a bit of fuzziness at times, and for the most part, the performances come off quite well. Mary Poppins and Pinocchio each get two inclusions, and aside from So Dear to My Heart, the rest of the sources are well-exposed entries in Disney’s catalog. A decent compilation, but the seemingly careless grab-bag nature stains it with a sense of pointlessness.