Dusty's inherent "soul" phrasing and sense of rhythm are still in the same league as any of her contemporaries and the album is sumptuously produced by Roy Thomas Baker of Queen fame. Some of America's top musicians like Richard Tee and Chuck Rainey play on the album and the overall effect is that no expense has been spared to re-establish the "Sixties' Top Singing Star" as a "Seventies Superstar".

The recent single "A Love Like Yours," written by the Supremes' hit-writing team Holland, Dozier, Holland, shows that Dusty can still rock with the best of them and elsewhere she shows that she can still instill magic into tender ballads. A marvellous comeback album from a marvellous lady.

Author unknown.

"It Begins Again . . . " for Dusty Springfield on her first album since she left the music business four years ago. This collection of pop ballads and love songs, delivered in styles ranging from rock to soul to mainstream pop, prove Springfield's talents have not diminished during the hiatus. Top-notch arrangements set off her rich and well-modulated voice on songs that will fit a variety of formats, both pop and MOR.

Author unknown.

It's so good to have an album from the lady after all these years that the critical faculties almost founder on the sense of occasion. However, there are quite enough words being spilled everywhere on the comeback - let's concentrate on the music itself

The voice is superb. Less strained than in the Sixties, more mature like a good wine, it cruises now rather than jerks and stabs. But the innate sense of swing is naturally still there, accompanied by a new inner warmth. Yes, the pipes are in great shape, unmistakable, unique.

The songs are patchy. Three are excellent - a magnificent "I'd Rather Leave While I'm In Love," with words powerful enough to wrest the best of Dusty's emotive interpretation; "Sandra," a deeply touching and observant tale on the same lines as "Dreams Of The Everyday Housewife"; and "Turn Me Around," the opening track on side one, is cool, relaxing, and shows off her voice splendidly.

But it's "I'd Rather Leave While I'm In Love" which will forever be the centrepiece of this record. Written by Carole Bayer Sager and Peter Allen, the song weaves around as a melody you find yourself humming after two or three spins, and the story-line is wistfully old-fashioned - in the "Losing You" league.

It's too fussily orchestrated, but survives in the hands of a stylish singer, and would have made a much more notable single than the disco-ish "A Love Like Yours," which may well be a hit, but is mundane.

Elsewhere, the album suffers from a lack of the familiar hook-lines which have always been a Dusty Springfield hallmark. There's not a bad track here but, given the long wait for an album, we might have expected stronger material.

If the record generally is good news, the production is over-cooked. Roy Thomas Baker, of Queen theatrical notoriety, produced. From the first announcement, this sounded a curious professional partnership, remembering that Dusty's finest work so far was her Memphis album, which was relaxed and intelligently under-produced.

The arrangements and orchestrations on It Begins Again are too busy. The artist and the occasion called for simplicity, re-establishing the voice. Instead, an over-active atmosphere worries nearly every song, hampering the clarity of the album.

For all the imperfections, though, this is an infectious and immensely enjoyable album of generally good songs. Dusty looks and sounds in infinitely better shape than we dared expect. The voice we all loved is back on record. Buy it and enjoy.

Author unknown.

This isn't Dusty Springfield's best album - Dusty in Memphis still holds that title - but it provides her usual pleasant surprise. Since Springfield records so sporadically (and with such little commercial success recently), each of her biennial offerings is greeted with genuine anticipation and relief, qualities that make her sweet sensuality even more enticing to cultists.

It Begins Again is marred by its material, which is rarely objectionable but hardly praiseworthy. The one chance she has here to match the potency of earlier masterpieces like "Son-Of-A Preacher Man" is Lesley Gore's and Ellen Weston's "Love Me By Name," but the song is buried by it's arrangement. "A Love Like Yours," a Martha and the Vandellas number, isn't as appropriate as it seems: Springfield can't be that tough. But on a piece of pure fluff like "I'd Rather Leave While I'm In Love," Springfield's soprano trails wisps of eroticism straight into the heart of pop. That feeling doesn't last, but while it's in the air, there's no finer mood music.

Side two, despite Barry Manilow's unctuous and condescending "Sandra," is as seemless as mid-afternoon 1966 Hollywood AM radio, until the final track, "That's the Kind of Love I've Got For You," in which Springfield suddenly becomes a blond challenger to Donna Summer's love-queen throne. Or maybe just makes us realize that Summer is the temporary occupant of a throne that Dusty Springfield created in the first place.

Dave Marsh
Rolling Stone, 1978