Brando's Badfinger Newsstand

by Charley Walters
Rolling Stone , August 12, 1976

Natural Gas's debut is unpolished popdirected rock. Unwisely, Felix Pappalardi's production emphasizes the bottom dimensions of the quartet's sound (bass and bass drum, for example) and obscures the higher and, for this group, more vital tones of the vocals, guitars, cymbals, snare drum etc. What should be somewhat light is instead leaden and plodding. But beyond this, the arrangements are nondescript and the instrumentation mediocre. While their singing may be technically correct, it has little conviction and their timbres don't mesh agreeably. The talented singer/guitarist Joey Molland calls a lot of the shots here -- Natural Gas, in fact, sounds much like his former group, the defunct Badfinger-- but his cohorts, among them ex-Humble Pie drummer Jerry Shirley, don't carry their weight. The group simply needs more time to develop.