Fans of "The Jeffersons" unpleased...the rest of us rejoice!

I look at the release of this album by Jefferson Starship in a similar light that I do the mid to late 80's releases by Black Sabbath. Two bands names who garnered so much attention and respect for a particular style and sound in the late 60's and early 70's that when it came time for the band to update their sound and the name remains the same, traditional fans get unruly. I think the album before this called "Modern Times" already had some leanings towards the type of radio-friendly pop rock that makes it's first headstrong and front-to-back appearance on this album. This same group of musicians (mostly anyway) would later cancel the "Jefferson" in their name and become known as just "Starship". This name is synonimous with tunes like "We Built This City", "Sara" and "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" to those of us who grew up listening to 80's rock. This album, the last one under the old monnicker is filled with the same great style of 80's pop rock music that the later 80's releases were! Only trouble is, some of us never knew about it until later on, because of the band's two name stereotyping (that would be me!). When I finally discovered this record, it was like a dream! I always loved the efforts of the Starship projects like "Knee Deep In Hoopla" and "Love Among The Cannibals" and to find that this was the same style was amazing and wonderful! In fact, other than "It's Not Enough" from the "Love Among The Cannibals" LP, "No Way Out" from "Nuclear Furniture" just might be my favorite (Jefferson) Starship song of all time! Forget the reviews of this album that mention the music as "simplistic" and "thrown together" and talking about them "selling-out" . Music is a funny thing, and times change. Musicians in a group like this are thankfully talented enough to last the span of two decades and change enough so that fans of other styles besides their progressively hybridized 70's stuff and "Jimmy Stewart's performance in Harvey" inspired psychedelic recordings of the 60's can have somehting of our own to enjoy. If you remember the "Jefferson Starship" of old, and are expecting that sound from this record...you will be disappointed. But if you are a fan of the talent and musicianship of members like Grace Slick and Mickey Thomas and are open minded and/or just plain love inventive, synth-energized pop rock with overblown choruses and a little quirk, then I highly recommend "Nuclear Furniture". A classic in my book!

Jefferson Starship Has An Identity Crisis

This last album of the group with the name Jefferson Starship is a poorly organized, and badly written album of songs that sound as though they were quickly written just for the sake of getting an album out.

On the one hand, you have Paul Kanter writing strange songs that are not power pop ballads, most notably about Rose, a character that appears in other songs Kanter has written for other JS albums. And then, you also have songs that sound like they are put together by a team of songwriters for Mickey Thomas to sing just for the sake of FM airplay. This album is not really representative of the group as a whole, and fails to produce a collection of songs that belong together on an album. Unless you already own it, don't buy it.