Eric Burdon & The Animals

Love Is is the third album by Eric Burdon and the Animals, but it's not really Burdon's or the Animals' album at all. They'd been recording since the early 60s, and this was already the second incarnation of the band (hence the separation of names). Burdon was basically a floating lead vocalist and he'd hook up with War in a couple short years.

This is actually just 5 musicians giving some covers the old Vanilla Fudge treatment (there's only one original song on the whole double album). If you want to get fussy, it's Zoot Money and Andy Summers killing time until they went on to the famous parts of their respective careers; 25% of the whole thing is reworked material from their previous band, so "the Animals" is really just a convenient way for all of them to keep busy in the studio without having to go through the hassle of pitching a new band to the labels.

I expect you know exactly what you're going to get from Eric Burdon. 49% of the time he sounds like Mick Jagger, 49% of the time he sounds like Joe Cocker, and 2% of the time he's talking in his Eric Burdon voice. If you're ok with that then this is a pretty enjoyable hour of psych/blues rock jamming. It's not a hit singles kind of record, it's more a studio version of a gig they might have played. Songs people know, played the way Eric, Zoot, and Andy want to play them. Nothing wrong with that at all in my opinion.

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