Consumer Guide Album

Lynyrd Skynyrd: Nuthin' Fancy [MCA, 1975]
On the one hand, two or three cuts here sound like heavy-metal-under-funk--check out "Saturday Night Special," a real killer. But on the other, Ronnie Van Zant has never deployed his limited, husky baritone with such subtlety. Where Gregg Allman (to choose a purely random example) is always straight, shuttling his voice between languor and high emotion, Van Zant feints and dodges, sly one moment and sleepy the next, turning boastful or indignant or admonitory with the barest shifts in timbre. I mean, dumb he ain't. A−