found a way to open up the dense textures of the music they had developed with on their two previous studio albums for , and were rewarded with their most popular album yet. Ten backup singers and musicians accompanied the original quartet, but somehow the sound was more spacious, and the music admitted aspects of , notably in the call-and-response of and -style , on As usual, determinedly sang and chanted impressionistic, nonlinear lyrics, sometimes by mix-and-matching cliches ("No visible means of support and you have not seen nothin' yet," he declared on ' first Top Ten hit), and the songs' very lack of clear meaning was itself a lyrical subject. "Still don't make no sense," admitted in but by the next song, that had become an order -- "Stop making sense," he chanted over and over. Some of his charming goofiness had returned since the overly serious , however, and the accompanying music, filled with odd percussive and synthesizer sounds, could be unusually light and bouncy. The album closer, even sounded hopeful. Well, sort of. Despite their formal power, ' preceding two albums seemed to have painted them into a corner, which may be why it took them three years to craft a follow-up, but on , they found an open window and flew out of it. ~ William Ruhlmann