Hall and Oates were never quite a new wave act, but new wave's insistence on formal economy and freshness of sound were just the tonic they needed: 'You Make My Dreams' appropriates Devo's jerky rhythms in the service of yacht rock, and 'Private Eyes' is essentially David Bowie's 'Fashion' with all the archness stripped out of it. Their willingness to bend with the times worked out well for their career peak, the 1980-1985 period documented on Disc Three. I sat down and wrote the song and there it is.' Well, that settles that.) (Hall, in the liner notes, on 'Wait for Me': 'It's a true story. Perfectly nice grooves are defaced with curlicues of check-out-my-bulging-forehead-veins saxophone. Oates takes the lead for a totally unnecessary cover of 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling'. 'I Don't Wanna Lose You' is an airy Philly disco pastiche with a great chorus, but Hall nearly sinks it with oversinging. Newman album- but it is, in fact, about their then-manager (Tommy Mottola!), and for this set, Hall has jarringly replaced the original recording's drums and remixed it. The heavy, daisy-chained hooks of 'Gino (The Manager)' are ahead of their time- it wouldn't sound far out of place on an A.C. On the second disc, though, both their gifts for tune and arrangement and their peculiar lapses of taste start to assert themselves. It ends with five songs from a 1975 London concert, by which point they seem to have settled into being an agreeable, quirky soft-rock band with really nice harmonies and a taste for the smoother end of R&B. The first disc begins with shruggable late-1960s singles by their individual teenage soul projects, the Temptones (Hall) and the Masters (Oates), then surveys the early albums on which Hall and Oates were a nearly hitless cult item ('She's Gone' squeaked up to #60 on the pop charts on its initial release). But the pong of tackiness hovers around them, and this lovingly assembled, more-than-complete boxed set doesn't dispel it. They're not particularly derivative, aside from their undying love for the Philadelphia soul scene that brought them together, and anyway it's not as if there are many pop artists with a fixation on that particular sound. What, exactly, is wrong about Daryl Hall and John Oates? It's not a lack of talent- they've got a stellar singer (and a pretty good one), and their songs are smart and durable.

Hall oates greatest hits album