Innocent (2005)

The Osmonds are an American family music group who gained their highest profile in the early 1970s. The group consists of siblings who are all members of the Osmond family, a family of musicians from Ogden, Utah, who have been nationally recognized since the 1960s…

For almost anyone who's interested enough in the First Class to own a record by them, this 21-track compilation should be enough. Summer Sound Sensations has songs from both of their albums, as well as some non-LP singles, no less than five cuts from their unreleased third album, and a previously unissued 1985 outtake, "Silver Surfer." The big 1974 hit "Beach Baby" is here, of course, and much of the rest of the material also sounds rather like a middle-of-the-road spin on the Beach Boys, with a bit of bubblegum pop and singer/songwriter fare thrown into the mix. There's also a peculiarly nostalgic cast to many of the songs, sometimes quite self-consciously looking back to better and more innocent times.

This box set delivers both a little more and a little less than it promises – though the packaging is so cryptic that it's difficult to say precisely what it does promise. Billed as The Pye Album Collection, it contains ten nicely packaged mini-LP sleeves (each with an appropriate inner sleeve to protect the CD – are you listening, Sony Classical, Rhino Handmade, and Hip-O Select?) representing the group's ten original albums for Pye Records.