Warner Bros. Presents (Montrose album)
| Warner Bros. Presents | ||||
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| Studio album by Montrose | ||||
| Released | September 1975 | |||
| Recorded | The Record Plant, Los Angeles and Sausalito, California | |||
| Genre | Hard rock, Heavy metal | |||
| Label | Warner Bros. Records | |||
| Producer | Ronnie Montrose | |||
| Montrose chronology | ||||
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| Ronnie Montrose chronology | ||||
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| Allmusic |   |
Warner Bros. Presents is the third album by the California-based hard rock band Montrose. It was released on Warner Bros. Records in September 1975.
It is the first Montrose album released after the departure of singer Sammy Hagar, the first Montrose album not produced by Ted Templeman, and the first Montrose album to feature a keyboardist as a full member of the band. Bob James, an unknown vocalist and songwriter from the South Bay area of Los Angeles who had been singing in a Montrose cover band, was chosen as Hagar's successor in early 1975. Another newcomer from Los Angeles, Jim Alcivar, joined the band on keyboards. At this juncture guitarist band leader Ronnie Montrose parted ways with Ted Templeman and chose to self-produce the album.
The record kicks off with the aggressive Deep Purple-esque hard rocker "Matriarch", followed by the radio-friendly ballad "All I Need", which alternates between soft acoustic verses and electric guitar crunch at the chorus. An upbeat hard rock cover of Eddie Cochran's rockabilly "Twenty Flight Rock" follows, serving as an echo of its stylistic companion "Good Rockin' Tonight" which appeared on the 1973 Montrose debut. Side One closes with the long progressive-rock influenced "Whaler", pairing Ronnie Montrose's acoustic guitar alongside Novi Novog's viola. A year earlier, Novog contributed viola on the Ted Templeman-produced Doobie Brothers hit, ""Black Water"". With its exotic combination of acoustic instrumentation punctuated by fog horn keyboard sounds, electronic production effects that mimic the casting sound of a fishing reel, and its picturesque lyrics, "Whaler" weighed-in as the band's most ambitious composition and elaborate production to date. Evoking the imagery and atmosphere of a seafaring adventure, the song was an unexpected FM hit in Canada, resulting in Montrose moving up from second-bill to headliner status for select performances.
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