Dawn Featuring Tony Orlando

AMG Review of Dawn Featuring Tony Orlando

Dave Thompson
All Music Guide

Dawn were still finding their feet when they cut their second album, as proven by its chart performance. The LP itself climbed no higher than number 178 on the U.S. listings, while the hits "Summer Sand," "I Play and Sing," and even the hyper-buoyant "What Are You Doing Sunday" scarcely climbed out of the lower half of the Top 40, and are barely remembered today. But there is a growing certainty to the group's performances here, a tighter grasp of the mature pop that would become their calling card, and a sense that the purebred bubblegum of "Candida" and "Knock Three Times" was already behind them. In its stead, "Sweet Soft Sounds of Love," "Get Out from Where We Are," and "Carmen" are tightly coiled AOR, years before that term had any currency whatsoever. Which may have been the album's problem; reissued four years later as Tony Orlando & Dawn II, it fared barely better chartwise than it managed first time around.