Golden Earring has been one of Holland's top bands for eight years and is just now approaching generally deserved world-wide success as a good, flashy hard-rock band. Unfortunately, it also has some crippling pretensions. Most of Side Two's effectiveness is diluted by long, tedious stretches of instrumental meandering.

Original album advertising art. Click image for larger view.

Even Side One's "Vanilla Queen" suffers from an irrelevant tailpiece of spacey noises and inferior riffing. But its British hit, "Radar Love" (which could have been more adroitly edited), remains a superbly mesmeric highway rocker, complete with a delightful reference to Brenda Lee's 1966 "Coming On Strong" and a great hook of a chorus. If Golden Earring conquers its distracting improvisational tendencies, it will be a band to be reckoned with.

- Ken Barnes, Rolling Stone, 6/20/74.

Further reading on Super Seventies RockSite!: Golden Earring Lyrics Golden Earring Videos

Bonus Reviews!

Top Dutch band could break here, with interesting mix of hard rock as on "Radar Love" and more gentle material like "Vanilla Queen."

- Billboard, 1974.

The single off this, "Radar Love," was voted best of 1973 in England but ran out of radio detecting and ranging waves in this country, which made Grand Funk's "The Loco-Motion" number one instead. Yah, yah, our stupid-rock is better than your stupid-rock -- especially when yours comes from Holland. C+

- Robert Christgau, Christgau's Record Guide, 1981.

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