Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons - The Motown Years

Mixed Motown bag from Jersey’s finest

Unsurprisingly, the success of the Jersey Boys stage show has prompted the slumbering giant that is major label Universal to delve back into their Motown/ Seasons-owned material and reissue it. At first sight the result appears to be a good one: the original group’s Chameleon album and the solo Valli release Inside You, with added bonuses.

From a collectors’ standpoint, however, it’s a tad disappointing. The bonuses duplicate four songs with only minor variations, rather than the hoped-for trip into the known selection of previously unreleased material that sits in Motown’s vaults. What we do get is very decent fare because, as always, the Seasons’ writing and production values are high. There is, however, the distinct feeling that their marriage with Motown was not the best relationship. The Night is a club classic, and When The Morning Comes is a song with attractive stylistic shifts, though Walk On, Don’t Look Back smacks of a corporate attempt to recapture the Seasons’ 1964 sounds. The Valli album is reasonable, featuring The Night again and the highly listenable Hickory, but overall it never quite settles on a direction. Certainly welcome, but hardcore collectors will see this as a chance missed for deep catalogue goodies.

3 stars 3 stars 3 stars

Hip-O Select | B 0010777-02

Reviewed by Kingsley Abbott
<< Back to Issue 353

Login Here

Free Newsletter


Subscribe to
our email newsletter by emailing:

anna.bowen@
metropolis.co.uk