LOOK AT THE FOOL

Originally intended as Tijuana Moon, another disastrous management move, along with an ugly artwork that Tim hated, even the album title is a bad idea (making him look like one); and if you thought Sefronia was very average, wait until you get a load of this one. Actually LATF does one thing better than its predecessor, it tries to return to the white funk of Greetings (but trying is not succeeding), and its production (Falsia is Tim's guitarist) is much better (not sounding as flat and rid of useless string arrangements), but songwriting-wise, this is weak!!

Starting on the over-stretched title track (just over 5 minutes, it's the longest of the album), but the least we can say is that this album is not helped by the quality of songwriting (including a rip off of Louie Louie in the closing Wanda Lu), but by the general musical strategy (heading Southeast bound, but quickly going nowhere), as it simply wouldn't have had a chance in that category, even if the songs had been ten times better. Of course there are moments of brilliance (the electric piano on the title track, the ultra funk bass of Bring it On Up), but overall, it's easy to understand why the album got lost in the shuffle.

By the middle of the album, you think you're in Stax album, white those semi-funk tracks as Tijuana Moon (it was a good thing the album didn't get called that anyway), the Motown back up singers-laden Ain't It Peculiar or the horn-laden Down In The Streets & Mexicali Voodoo. To top it all off, there is not even one track that stands out from the rest of the molten slush.

An ultimately useless album that was doing nothing to return Tim to stardom, his manager Cohen even getting fired by Tim's lawyer firm overlooking his debts, LATF is unfortunately Tim's last album, as he will tour around the US and Europe , but upon his return home, he started to party and accidentally mistook heroin for cocaine, snorting junk. LATF would be a correct Stax album (probably even above average), but for Buckley fans or progheads, its best forgotten