I owned the original "The Sweet" Bell album as a teenager and loved it, wore it out completely. I had a mid-life crisis a while back and HAD to have "Hellraiser" again (the band I fronted in high school included it in our sets), so I sprung for one of Amazon's used copies of Sweet's American debut. It's interesting to listen to it again with older and more seasoned ears, with all the silly bubblegum double entendres the Chinn/Chapmann team were so wickedly good at. I mean, "Wig Wam Bam," REALLY!
On the otherhand, the fact that Sweet was bristling at their forced bubble-glam image early on is obvious on this CD. The Connolly-Scott-Tucker-Priest originals mixed in with the Chinn/Chapman insta-hits show the band champing at the bit to escape the silly Indian headgear so they could get on stage and rock. "New York Connection" and "Need A Lot Of Lovin'" show that Sweet were far more interested in sounding like Slade than the Bay City Rollers.
While certainly not indispensable, "The Sweet" show just how fun workmanlike songcraft could be, and also provides an interesting P.O.V. into Sweet's evolution.