There's no discernible concept to this - it's hard to figure out what purpose is served by the quaint covers, 30-second fragments, half-finished works-in-progress and near-wordless guide vocals that cast a disproportionate shadow over the rest of the album. Buddah never did forgive Melanie for this and continued to dog her career by releasing old, in-the-can songs right around the time she'd release new songs on Neighborhood.

Allmusic stated that the album "is one of her most accomplished and confident albums, a set that allowed Melanie the room to indulge her lyrical obsessions while Schekeryk created superb musical accompaniment from her simple but forceful melodies. And of course, there's "Brand New Key" - Safka scholars aren't supposed to like it, because of the Wurzel connection and the way it stereotyped her in people's minds as a novelty act, but resistance is futile.But then, the "God stuff" keeps cropping up where you least expect it - not only in the album's coda (a song which may date from the 1900s), but implicitly in "Some Say I Got Devil" and "Railroad", and explicitly in "Center of the Circle", the longest of those seemingly-unfinished songs which fortunately is rescued by arranger Roger Kellaway - who unexpectedly converts it into a wild flight of fancy, a chamber-pop tour-de-force.

For this listener, the biggest problem with the album is a more mundane one - there's too much religious content. The only time I felt good about myself when I was in front of you, and we were together, and I could see and sense that all was well. It was such an unexpected surprise when I listened back to Brand New Key, Living Bell, Some Say, and I look at the girl I was. Gather Me was Melanie's first album on the Neighborhood label which was founded by herself with her husband and manager Peter Schekeryk (to whom she stayed married until his death in 2010). The only negative being the lyrics with Melanie at times, explaining what a great person she is, which can be a little irritating.When they signed Melanie they were high on Bubblegum Music, having struck gold in 1968 with groups like the Ohio Express and the 1910 Fruitgum Co.

Brand New Key had even been banned by some radio stations because its lyrics could be read as something less innocent than the song sounded when Melanie recorded it in the little girl voice she sometimes used. I'm convinced it's a bit of a mickey-take - a metaphor has to make sense on one or both levels, but this can only be read (with difficulty) as, nothing more and nothing less than, a "hymn" to a night on the town. The whole album presents a grown up Melanie with a interestingly wide range of material and the same intensity that marked her earlier albums and along with her sincerity was a defining characteristic. The Southern Appalachian folk-hymn What Wondrous Love is given an appropriately simple treatment with mostly Melanie's voice and guitar.Some of her classics can be found on this as well, from “Ring the Living Bell” to “Some Say (I Got Devil), to name but 2 of the best of her work.