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The disc is something of a game-changer for the sextet, as it marks the point where the brothers begin to turn away from the R&B makeovers of pop tunes that had given the group new life in the earlier part of the decade. It wasn’t nearly as successful a crossover hit as either of the albums that bookend it, stalling at #14 on the Billboard 200 (ironically, it became their first album to top the R&B charts), and becoming the trio’s first disc since Get Into Something to fail to yield a Top 40 pop hit, but the oft-overlooked Live It Up actually doesn’t fall all that shy of equaling the greatness of either 3 + 3 or The Heat Is On. No serious R&B collector should be without a copy of this disc. The self-penned numbers that comprise the other half of the album even surpass the originals from Brother, Brother, Brother in terms of greatness “That Lady” is naturally the best in the bunch, but “If You Were There” (later covered by Wham! on their multi-platinum breakthrough Make It Big) and “What It Comes Down To” should have been Top 40 hits in their own right. Like Brother, Brother, Brother before it, half of the disc is comprised of unlikely covers from the pop/rock world, and they’re all wildly entertaining, be it their radically-rearranged yet fittingly eerie take on folkie Jonathan Edwards’ “Sunshine,” the funkified makeover of the Doobies’ “Listen to the Music,” or Ronald’s sultry rendering of James Taylor’s “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight.” Even better is their version of “Summer Breeze,” which they don’t actually re-arrange all that greatly from the original so much as they simply inject a little soul into it, to astounding results that make the song as much of a signature tune for the Isleys as it was for Seals and Crofts. Ernie’s Hendrix-styled fuzzed-out guitar heroics had graced their discs before, but they’re pushed to the forefront here, even carrying the lead-off cut, the now-timeless – and oh-so-sleek – grooves of “That Lady, Part 1 & 2,” the group’s first Top Ten hit since “It’s Your Thing.” Nothing else here was a major pop hit, but it’s certainly not for lack of quality – this is actually arguably their finest full-length up to this point.
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It’s not the first album from the Isleys to include younger brothers Ernie and Marvin and brother-in-law Chris Jasper, but 3 + 3 marks the point where the band officially became a sextet, in addition to being the first release from the band to be distributed through Columbia.