Fandango - Last Kiss (Expanded Edition) (1978)

By the time Last Kiss rolled out a year after Fandango's eponymous debut, the group had added three more members to flesh out its sound. The results add a more jam-friendly dimension at times, especially during "Hotel LaRue" and "Mexico." The songwriting and arrangements are tight and focused when compared to Fandango, and the band branches out into new creative territory and sound exploration while staying firmly entrenched in its rock & roll roots. There are also pauses for experimentation at times. The dreamy synth intro of "Feel the Pain" seems as if Fandango took a wrong turn down the prog rock aisle of the rock & roll supermarket before recovering into a verse sounding somewhat similar to Fleetwood Mac's "You Make Loving Fun." The group also acknowledges the emerging influence of disco on popular culture with "Losin' Kind of Love," whose basslines shift between AOR and the pop snap of commercialized disco. Fandango definitely had a knack for trying adventurous things, something that so many of their contemporaries failed to do.