All Together Now - ARGENT***

Hold Your Head Up/Keep On Rollin'/Tragedy/I Am The Dance Of The Ages/Be My Lover Be My Friend/He's A Dynamo/Pure Love

All Together Now was the most commercially successful album released by the progressive group Argent led by the former Zombies keyboardist Rod Argent. Includes the UK and US top 5 hit Hold Your Head Up. (US:23 UK:13)

After the excellent Hold Your Head Up, the album falls into the usual seventies rock dirge, with fantastical lines and grand themes that amount to absolutely nothing.”

“Argent's probably best known album All Together Now is a mixed bag, like so many 1970s albums I have recently explored. Hold Your Head Up sounds great and contains a typical feel for its era: quite heavy, slightly progressive, but still catchy.”

“There are three good tracks on this - Tragedy, I Am The Dance Of The Ages and the feature track Hold Your Head Up. But for what was a fairly major prog band of the era, the rest of the material is distressingly mediocre.”

“An overall decent release, it's rather heavy prog that often feels somewhat lacking in any real substance, almost as if they were handed the formula for progressive rock, and then just filled in the blanks, without summoning up any of their own input to expound upon. Like all of the rest of their releases, this features substantial amounts of keyboards, and some guitar. But these passages sound generic and are less compelling than advertised.”

“There is nothing fundamentally wrong with it. But on the other hand, as it contains their biggest hit Hold Your Head Up I have never felt the need to own another. I always feel the same way after listening to it too. It's enjoyable but doesn't leave me craving more of the same.”

“This album finds Argent moving towards a rather generic heavy sound that doesn't do much for me. Hold Your Head Up is good but one of those songs I've heard too many times; the only other track that I find particularly interesting is the one with the ELP style organ fugue on side two.”

“With the release of All Together Now, Argent achieved a wider degree of fame and commercial success, thanks in no small part to the hit Hold Your Head Up. The song remains a FM radio classic, thanks to its catchy guitar riff, marching rhythm, a great organ solo by Rod Argent and a memorable, anthemic chorus.”