So Long Bannatyne

Recorded in a two-week stint in June of 1971, So Long, Bannatyne was the Guess Who s first album following the departure of guitarist Randy Bachman, who left the band after 1970 s commercially successful Share the Land. Produced by Jack Richardson, the new album, with new guitarists Kurt Winter and Greg Leskiw on board, opened well with Rain Dance and the perceptive She Might Have Been a Nice Girl, but then fell into a kind of disjointed, dispirited, and rather exhausted-sounding mishmash of underdeveloped songs. The album was reissued in the digital era with the March 1971 single Albert Flasher b/w Broken included as bonus tracks, which lifted things considerably, allowing the sequence to end as strongly as it begins. In retrospect, So Long, Bannatyne wasn t a disaster, but it didn t move the band forward either, and it still seems, all these years later, like an underrealized release that s short on memorable songs. ~ Steve Leggett, All Music Guide