The first sound you'll hear when you press play on the Association's self-titled fifth album, released in 1969, is the plucking of a banjo. No need to check to make sure you've got the right disc in your player though. Rest assured, it's The Association. And how. Having followed their towering love ballads and walls of vocal harmonies to their logical extreme (and commercial limit) with what would be their last top 10 single "Everything That Touches You" the previous year, along comes a new Association, re-invigorated by the return of founding member Gary (now Jules) Alexander (back from India), and their new partnership with producer John Boylan (who would become one of the premier producers of country-flavored rock and pop in the 1970s, with a resume that included Linda Ronstadt, the Little River Band, and, errm, Boston - though in practice he wasn't so much a producer for them as a babysitter assigned to Tom Scholz by his record company bosses).

Now a septet with two lead guitarists and seven (count 'em, seven!) distinct singer-songwriters, The Association approached their fifth album as a grand departure from everything that came before; and if it also proved a vast commercial departure (okay, failure) - the album yielded only two singles, Boylan's own rocking rouser "Yes I Will" and the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young-inspired folk harmony epic "Under Branches", and both peaked just below the Hot 100 on Billboard's "Bubbling Under" chart - it also proved one of the band's most artistically substantial collections - still probably the most highly regarded album in their catalog by many critics. With its unlikely combination of pedal-steel guitars here and buzzed-out psychedelic noodlings there, and a far more organic (less choirloft, more campire) approach to their trademark vocal harmonies, the record is certainly much more authentically in tune with what was going on around it musically at the time.

Of course, you're never going to mistake "Under Branches" for CSN&Y; nor the poignant, 20/20 hindsight of a war veteran in the folksy, effortlessly melodic opener "Look at Me, Look at You" for a song by the Byrds; nor the uncharacteristically funky psychedelic blues riffage of "I Am Up For Europe" for Cream. Despite his best efforts, the gravel-voiced soulster Brian Cole is no David Clayton-Thomas; and in his indulgently goofy tribute to his favorite vege-table, "Broccoli", Jules Alexander (described by bandmate Terry Kirkman as a "militant vegetarian" in Richie Unterburger's liner notes) proves he's no Brian Wilson.

But, for once, the Association's sound reflects an awareness of and affection for all of these influences - and quite nobly attempts to Association-ize those sounds with mostly lovely, and occasionally - as on the rising tide country harmonies of "What Were the Words" (backed up by The Dillards) - mindblowing results. There's a guitar break in the grandiose album-closer "Boy on the Mountain" that predicts the sleek multi-layered harmonics of Brian May with an eerie exactitude. In fact, the one song here that sounds the most like the band that produced ballads like "Cherish" and "Never My Love" - a woozily atmospheric dream of a song called "Love Affair" - while lovely, is nevertheless one of the album's dullest moments. It's not an embarrassment by any stretch - it would have worked beautifully on the band's more lushly romantic album Birthday - but it feels completely out of place on this otherwise defiantly forward-looking record. And while songs like R&B work-out of "Are You Ready?" or the hallucinogenically strange "The Nest" don't quite hit their mark, each one contributes to a sprawl of ambitious eclecticism, giving the record a bigger-than-itself quality.

On its merits alone, and notwithstanding the perplexing cover art (depicting a stonehenge on the moon, overlooking a cubical earth - and on the inside, a proportionally impossible stonehenge in the middle of that cubical earth's Atlantic Ocean, overlooking a spherical moon), The Association is a coulda-been contender for canonization as one of the Great American Records of the Late 1960s. But in 1969, the band had a reputation to contend with: on one hand, they were moving away from the sound that had made them popular; and on the other, their grand departure ultimately didn't prove grand enough to win them over with a new audience that, ironically, likely thought of the band as being too commercial. Hindsight has shown that they were nothing of the sort, and that The Association is an unlikely highlight of the band's career - the definitive Association record for people who don't really like The Association. And also, for those who do.

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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:

"The Association" by The Association
Originally released on Warner Bros. Records, 1969
Collectors' Choice Records
Reissued 2003

Produced by John Boylan
38 min.

SONGS: Look at Me, Look at You - Love Affair - Yes I Will - The Nest - What Were the Words - Are You Ready? - Dubuque Blues - Under Branches - I Am Up For Europe - Broccoli - Goodbye Forever - Boy on the Mountain

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MORE BY THE ASSOCIATION:

And Then... Along Comes the Association (1965)

Renaissance (1966)

Insight Out (1967)

Birthday (1968)

Goodbye, Columbus (Soundtrack) (1969)

Recommended: Yes