Comments for America, Hat Trick

America's most mellow album.

This is one of America's best efforts! It was their most ambitious work at the time. Contains some harder songs such as Hat Trick, It's Life, and Green Monkey (which features Joe Walsh on lead guitar).

Hat Trick is the definitive America album ... amazingly focused, well written and beautifully executed. The only other album I know of with this kind of cinematic dimension is Chris Rea's "On The Beach". Hat Trick is an essential.

This album is lost on me. I guess I'm in tune with the record-buying public at the time, who seemed to say a collective "Huh?" "Muskrat Love" is my least favorite America single - the music is fine, but I'm glad they didn't write those ridiculous lyrics! And, on a petty note, the album cover and art has to be among the worst ever. On a recent re-listen, I found this album has grown on me, but only slightly. It doesn't stack up to the first two.

Hattrick is an interesting recording from the standpoint that it signaled a maturity in the bands songwriting. The tracks seemed a little more lighthearted. The title track was originally five songs that were unfinished and put together (quite nicely). I agree that "Muskrat Love" was a weak single, however their version, with it's lush harmonies is far superior to the Captain and Tenielle's. The best tracks on this album "Submarine Ladies", "She's Gonna Let You Down" and "It's Life" (at least until Dan Peek tries to hit the high notes).

This album is quite distinct in that it has some of the best melodies to be found on any America Album. Tracks like Rainbow Song and Molten Lovare like no other I have ever heard. Who has done anything like that since? Certainl not America, for after this album their sound began to move away from the trademark acoustics to a more simplified sound...

This album is quite distinct in that it has some of the best melodies to be found on any America Album. Tracks like Rainbow Song and Molten Lovare like no other I have ever heard. Who has done anything like that since? Certainl not America, for after this album their sound began to move away from the trademark acoustics to a more simplified sound...

Once you get past Muskrat Love, Hat Trick is one of America's better albums. Rainbow Song and the rest of the first side have gorgeous melodies and instrumentation. The flip side is a little weaker, but Hat Trick will go down as one of my favorite songs ever, and it's way too much fun to play on the piano! And Green Monkey is one of the few America songs that truly rocks. This album and Homecoming stand out so far ahead of anything else America has done. The back cover--carrying the sun in a mirrow--has fascinated me for 25 years.

Hat-Trick can be summed up in one word... "everything!". How many albums can you find that contain rich acoustic guitar, great piano, orchestration and hard rock guitar, piled into a mish mosh of wonderful spine chilling melodies and thought-provoking lyrics?...well...you can't. Hat trick does it and it does it quite well...criticize it if you must but the thing does more for a regular 11 song LP than I've ever heard!

By far the most creative, free flowing, lyrically intresting, seamless, emotionally mood setting album they ever did. The only album that comes close is Homecoming, but they perfected that feel w/ Hat Trick. It would be an all time 10 if not for that horrific muscrat love crap! For all of you REAL fans there is no two ways about it, that song is trully awful & gives credence to all critics that trash this great band. That having been said, Even Sgt Pepper had its "Within You, Without You" (another song that does not belong on a album). Another thing that bugs me personally is that this album is so overlooked. Until I discovered this web page I thought Me, My wife Janeen & my buddie Jeff were the only people who enjoyed this album. One of my concert highlights was being priveledged to here Green Monkey live July 4, 1997 in Ft Laud.

America's most underrated album! If you loved the first two albums, and have never heard Hat Trick (and I know a lot of people haven't), then your in for a treat. This is their last album performed in the original America style.

As long as there are fish in the sea have a cup of tea and a truly relaxing time with Americas masterpiece Hat Trick.....just some thougts from my nordic horizon...JS

Until I read this page I felt like I was well out of step with most other music consumers. I love "Hat Trick," and still think it's a criminally underrated record. I bought the LP new in 1973 and still listen to it today, mostly on a Maxell cassette in my car during my 40-minute commute to work. "Hat Trick" holds together for me better than virtually any other record America ever did. I have no idea how it was recorded. For all I know they may have cut the acoustic guitar tracks over the phone, but it ends up sounding to my ears like an aural postcard from some incredible, rusticated camp site deep in the imagination. I can't explain why it feels that way to me, but the musical bed on which these guys lay their lyrics for "Hat Trick" just conjurs for me misty mornings in a dark, cool forest by a stream. Lyrically, there isn't another America LP where the prose is so consistently inspired. Dan Peek's "Willow Tree Lullabye" is haunting, as is Dewey's "Rainbow Song." The title track is beautifully melded and virtually every cut just creates a seamless, magical mood. Sure, I think they shot themselves in the foot by cutting "Muskrat Love," but it doesn't sound terribly out of place on the record. Why did the Beatles get away with "Your Mother Should Know" or, to leap ahead a couple decades, why does Bruce Springsteen get away with "Pony Boy," yet America has to be slagged off - permanently - as poster boys for nauseating cuteness because of "Muskrat Love?" The "Hat Trick" LP was a brilliant record. I once heard Gerry B. tell Philly-area radio personality Ed Sciakey, in an interview I have on tape, that after "Hat Trick" the band decided to ditch its "infantile" stabs at arranging and orchestrating and that's why they went after George Martin. Well OK. The next LP, "Holiday," deservedly stands as one of their most cohesive, lovely works, but it's nowhere near as lyrically inspired and I think the boys sold themselves short if they think their production and arrangement work on "Hat Trick" was amateurish. As Dewey sang on Hat Trick's "Green Monkey," another great song: "Don't let the features you read control the tickets you buy." In other words, "screw the critics, what do they know anyway?" To anyone who may be wondering about "Hat Trick" and whether to buy it, I say, as someone else on this page already has, it's essential!

YES! BUY THIS ALBUM! It''s a dark, mysterious, and moody album; with one exception: "Muskrat Love". "Muskrat Love" is a beautiful and pretty song. And I''m not ashamed to admit that I actually like it alot. It offers a pleasant contrast to the rest of the album. Once you hear Hat Trick''s title song, it will stay in your memory for the rest of your life! It even has tap dancing! This album contains the hardest rockin'' tune America ever recorded: "Green Monkey". The whole album is a winner in my book. For me, every song is a 10 except the wimpy "GoodBye" which rates a 6. It''s the last song on the album so it''s easy to ignor. At first glance the cover art looks kinda stupid. But it too is dark, mysterious, and moody; just like the music contained inside. So it definitely works. I even like the western outfits the boys are wearing. It''s the only album that they''re seen wearing this type of clothing. I''ve listened to this album several hundred times and it still has the endurance and power to move me.

America on a weird day....This album has it`s moments!

I think Hat Trick is a classic and was wondering if anyone knows where you can get a CD of it.

hat trick is the BEST america record EVER. getting past the stupid lyrics of "submarine ladies", every song rules, including "muskrat love".

hat trick is the BEST america record EVER. getting past the stupid lyrics of "submarine ladies", every song rules, including "muskrat love".

Dan's At The Hop and Dewey's Bat Out Of Hell sound like smash hit singles to me! The album cover design shrunk the America logo to barely legible plus the photo of them in suits could have been anybody! Hat Trick is great - but it needed a smash hit single, like it's predecessors, to break into the Top Ten - Muskrat Love, a nice song, was the wrong choice, unfortunately.