Mojo - The Music Magazine

...SEE NUMBER 2

Four Tops
Reach Out
(Motown, 1967)

When the Four Tops were kings of the world. RIP Levi Stubbs.

Of all the many memorable transformations wrought by Motown’s Hitsville hothouse in the 1960s, perhaps none was more remarkable than that of The Four Tops: four men in their thirties, comfortable in their supper club routine of standards, jazz phrasing and easily crooned harmonies, metamorphosed into million-selling pop stars at the forefront of the label’s international expansion. Spearheaded by the certain power and wonderful expressiveness of the quartet’s lead singer, the great Levi Stubbs, and steered by the songs of Holland-Dozier-Holland, Reach Out was their fourth studio album, and is awash with hits – Reach Out I’ll Be There, 7 Rooms Of Gloom, I’ll Turn To Stone, Standing In The Shadows Of Love and Bernadette (all written and produced by H-D-H) plus their atmospheric cover of The Left Banke’s Walk Away Renee, and though they’re less at home with Monkees hand-me-downs Last Train To Clarksville and I’m A Believer (one can hear, if not condescension, then a certain lack of engagement with the lyrics) they’re much more comfortable with Tim Hardin’s If I Were A Carpenter. Ultimately, Levi Stubbs’s voice conquers all: strong, beseeching, teetering on the edge of heartbreak, bursting with the thrill of new love, that explosive tenor joyfully roaring out “Bernadette!” or healing the world’s pain with the sheer exultation of this album’s mightily comforting, all-encompassing bear-hug of a title track. Proving that too much of a good thing can be wonderful, Reach Out is available as a twofer with On Top.

Geoff Brown/em>

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