Fandango - One Night Stand (Expanded Edition) (1979)

As the musical landscape of the late '70s radically shifted and positioned itself for the '80s, Fandango experimented with a wide variety of popular styles and attitudes found in commercial rock, ranging from Southern rock jam shuffles to disco-infused three-minute pop songs and ambitious synth-anchored radio-friendly hits. So, two years and two albums into their career and Fandango were finally taking shape, finding their own unique sound and identity. One Night Stand rests firmly on the principles of arena rock and delivers them in a focused ten-song session. Crunchy, compressed guitars overdubbed on top of one another stand out more here than in the previous two discs, and the group's vocal harmonies (and their dual lead-guitar lines) expand beyond anything they've done up to this point. But all of these improvements aside, there is very little about any one of these particular songs that stands out above the rest. It's a solid and consistent album from start to finish, and probably the most accessible of the Fandango catalog.