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I listened to that album and thought they ripped off about 16 bands throughout, so I wasn't impressed by what I heard (compared to how original or great I had been told they were). However the 1980 album was really good. I am going to explore their other stuff first.
By the time they did this album they were just a duo of Graham Gouldman and Eric Stewart + studio musician. What you want to are albums when they also had Creme and Godley, starting with S/T and up to "How Dare You". This quartet loved Beach Boy harmonies, but were also highly influenced by Frank Zappa and did great parodies, or in their case, homages to music that influenced them.
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