New York Dolls ‎– New York Dolls (red) – VINYL LP

Description

The debut New York Dolls album for Mercury is more or less a vinyl representation of where the group stands musically — at least they’ve displayed themselves in their concert performances — and as such it is faultless. What we get is solid rock-and-roll (with the exception of “Lonely Planet Boy”) heavily influenced by the Rolling Stones, the Who, and an assortment of English bands. For the most part, producer Todd Rundgren serves strictly as a studio technician, crossing the guitars from speaker to speaker at just the right moments, making the drums sound like garbage-can lids on “Trash,” and in general giving the group as “live” a sound as possible. There is one track, though, on which both Todd and the Dolls manage to pull out all the stops. “Frankenstein,” the album’s centerpiece, has the guitars imitating lawnmowers as well as executing some incredible sound effects, and the resultant Spector-ized wall of sound is guaranteed to knock you across the room. The point is, though, that there’s hardly any of Rundgren in the Dolls’ record, which must be counted as an asset; Todd’s venture here is a success because it sounds just like the New York Dolls. Providing he’s got something substantial to work with, as in this case, this should be the producer’s ultimate goal.

– Jon Tiven, Stereo Review, 1/74.