Hold Your Horses cover

Hold Your Horses

Released

The Philadelphia-based First Choice were one of disco’s most consistently enjoyable groups — one with a career that span practically the entire initial lifecycle of the genre from early ’70s Philly soul origins to its turn of the ’80s burnout. And 1979’s Hold Your Horses might be the best of their three-album Gold Mind/Salsoul run, even if the hits off this album tended to feel more gigantic than they actually were. Three singles all bolstered the LP’s particularly strong Side 2, with the thoroughbred gallop of the title cut, the mid-tempo clavinet-heavy rump-shaker “Love Thang,” and the slap-bass-driven high drama of “Double Cross” all shining like the clubland chart-toppers they inexplicably weren’t. (“Hold Your Horses” was a Dance #5 in the States, granted, but the other two didn’t crack the Top 40 anywhere — a damn shame.) But the trio of album cuts that comprise the Side 1 medley — the gleaming sax flourishes of “Let Me Down Easy,” the flamenco exotica of “Good Morning Midnight,” and the melodramatic Eurodisco pulse of “Great Expectations” — are momentously fun, too, highlight reels for both the headliners’ incredible vocal chops and the immaculate mixing and production skills of Tom Moulton. Recorded partially in Giorgio Moroder’s Musicland Studios in Munich and partially in Philadelphia’s Sigma Sound, Hold Your Horses embodied the broad international sound of peak disco at its best, right as that peak was on the downswing towards a backlash-driven valley — bad timing for an ambitious LP that pulls off every one of its surprisingly eclectic gambits.

Nate Patrin

Suggestions
The Stylistics cover

The Stylistics

The Stylistics
Inner Life cover

Inner Life

Inner Life
Instant Funk cover

Instant Funk

Instant Funk
Discovery cover

Discovery

Daft Punk
DJ-Kicks cover

DJ-Kicks

Juan MacLean
Sylvester And The Hot Band cover

Sylvester And The Hot Band

Sylvester and the Hot Band
Disco Boogie cover

Disco Boogie

Various Artists, Walter Gibbons
Pleasure cover

Pleasure

Ohio Players
Fabriclive.41 cover

Fabriclive.41

Simian Mobile Disco