I’ve been listening to a ton of Cheap Trick the past week. It started when I picked up their 2006 album Rockford
off of eMusic a couple weeks back, and couldn’t stop listening to it. I’d never previously ventured past Cheap Trick’s 70’s albums before (unless you count a copy of power ballad “The Flame” that I had on 45 when I was 15), since the general consensus seems to be that the quality of the band’s output dipped sharply in the 80’s. There have been a couple of hyped “comeback” records over the years — 1997’s Cheap Trick
comes to mind — but I never checked any of them out, either.
But Rockford is really, truly excellent — from the moment the drums and guitars kick in 12 seconds into opener “Welcome To The World”, the band doesn’t let up. They sound energetic and aggressive, and Robin Zander is in great voice. But what really makes the album great are the songs. “If It Takes A Lifetime” and “Dream The Night Away” are incredibly catchy, slick power pop, “Give It Away” is a gritty rocker, and closer “Decaf” is heavy and ferocious. Oddly, two of the song names hint at tracks from 1977’s In Color
, “O Claire” (think “Oh Caroline”) and “Come On Come On Come On” (versus “Come On, Come On”). Neither song sounds much like its predecessor, though — “O Claire” is Beatlesque pop, and “Come On Come On Come On” is probably the most pummeling song on the album. Pretty much everything is first rate.
Poking around online for information on what the band’s been up to the past few decades, I came on a bootleg copy of the aborted 1997 re-recordings of In Color that the band did with Steve Albini (the band, reportedly, was never happy with the slick, clean sound on the original album) . I don’t know why the ‘97 sessions were never completed — the songs are pretty much finished, just missing some overdubs — but it’s a fun listen if you’re already familiar with the original LP. The band doesn’t stray very far from the original arrangements (other than some saxophones added to “Hello There”, and “I Want You To Want Me” sounding much more like the Budokan
version), but these recordings are significantly more aggressive. This works especially on “Big Eyes”, which always came off to me as a goofy novelty on the original LP but rocks here. A few songs, like “Oh Caroline” and “Southern Girls”, sound like they haven’t had all their harmony vocals laid down, and suffer as a result, but other than that, this is a really cool listen.
Then I found out that the band actually just put out another album, The Latest
, a couple weeks ago. I was somewhat underwhelmed the first time I listened to the samples on Amazon — there seemed to be an awful lot of balladry on the album — but the samples grew on me with repeated listens, and I downloaded it tonight. Sounds pretty good so far! Not as good as Rockford, but still quite solid.
Man, that’s a lot of Cheap Trick. I’m overwhelmed.
