So Tough, Carl and the Passions (The Beach Boys), 1972

No passion.

Wikipedia, with untypical dryness, calls its reception "less than rapturous."

The Academy In Peril, John Cale, 1972

File under discoveries. I can recommend this album without reservation. The music is beautiful and thoughtful. Cale has a sense of humor about himself and it shows here. The academy is in peril because the rockers have invaded it (the very thing that might blow a little fresh air into the old place). Not sure who Cale thought would be the audience for this. That’s the trouble with classicists.

Full Circle, The Doors (without Jim Morrison), 1972

I feel bad for hitting them when they’re down, but you must be fucking kidding me. This is dire. Never mind half assed, this misses the ass entirely,. It’s worse when they evoke the old Doors, like on “4 Billion Souls.” I like this lyric - “Year 2000 is the cutoff point.”

BONUS - The truly awful album cover

Transformer, Lou Reed, 1972 and Exile on Main St., The Rolling Stones, 1972

I see parallels between Transformer and Exile on Main St. Lou using strings, piano - the Stones using horns and adding other instruments. Recall that Exile got bad reviews because it was not guitar driven and buried Jagger's vocals in the mix! (The 2010 reissue cleaned it up too much! Keith didn't like it.) 

Artists should take care with their old work.  Remember how the painter Gully Jimson (in Joyce Cary's wonderful novel The Horse's Mouth) was trying to get people to forget the Sara Monday paintings (while simultaneously trying, without much success, to wring money from them).