Arrogance – Rumors (1976)

After issuing two albums, 1973's Give Us a Break and 1975's Prolepsis, on their own, Arrogance was finally contracted to Vanguard, a national record label, and the bandmembers headed north to record their third album, Rumors, in New York with a real producer, John Anthony, a string section, and guest musicians such as Eric Weissberg. Vanguard may have hoped that they had discovered an answer to the Eagles, what with the group's folk-country-rock sound and harmonies. But it might have been more accurate to say that they had found an American version of Brinsley Schwarz, the British country-rock band full of major talents who would never make it in that configuration. Arrogance was a bit too quirky to achieve the kind of mass success the Eagles and their Southern California ilk had. Their sense of country music was homegrown in their North Carolina roots, but it was also taken for granted, merely the basis of an eclectic, individual sound that was more about the different writing talents of Robert Kirkland and Don Dixon. Well-named, Arrogance was a band with their own approach, which encompassed sly references to their favorite music, jokes about the recording process, and a mixture of styles they had perfected in years of gigs. Despite the studio trappings, their third album, which drew upon their first two for such songs as "Sunday Feeling" and "Why Do You Love Me," was of a piece with their earlier work, and like those recordings it was a fanciful mixture that was like nothing so much as Buffalo Springfield with a sense of humor. "Nobody listens if they have to strain, nobody wants you if you're not the same," sang Dixon in "I Doubt It," which expressed the group's foreboding about their national move, and it was a prescient comment.~William Ruhlmann