Published on Aug 11, 2005
Opening with a lone harmonica, this signaled the advent of
commercial-era Supertramp, an era which would result in three great
albums and two mediocre ones.
I would venture to say this is the band’s best album, mainly
because it’s strong throughout while retaining the Supertramp feel.
It’s darker than
Breakfast In America and poppier than
Even In The Quietest Moments, and far better than
Crisis? What Crisis?
Why? The band knows how to build up tension, not just with the
instrumental passages but with the lighter pop tunes as well. There
is a definite mood in the beginning of “School,” which explodes
into the rock part of the track, which then gives way to a piano
solo that Billy Joel would have paid for.
This gives way to “Bloody Well Right,” with a playful piano
intro and Roger Hodgson doing his best David Gilmour singing voice
over the verse (Gilmour returned the favor by playing guitar on
“Brother Where You Bound” in 1985). The horns lend a bit of flavor
to the song, but it mostly gets by on guitar crunch and
attitude.
“Hide In Your Shell” is a slower piece that builds up to a more
powerful climax three times, altering the ending a little each
time, while “Asylum” is the only forgettable song here, not really
picking up steam until the end with some annoying yelping over a
stop-start rock passage.
“Dreamer” was the biggest hit here (in 1980, six years later), a
short but sprightly piano-driven piece that — like most of the
songs here — starts simply and builds in intensity, adding
instruments until the explosive finale and, finally, a lone
xylophone fading off in the distance. It’s the song that exposed
the band to America, and rightly so.
The second side is a lot more progressive than the first, with
the 7-minute “Rudy” acting as a melding of Queen and Jethro Tull
and an Elton John-like piano piece called “If Everyone Was
Listening” that would have fit well on
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. But the centerpiece of the album
is the title track, which starts with a short and unsettling rock
song before moving into the coda, a three-minute piano/guitar/sax
duel that is among the most passionate ever put onto a rock
record.
Six of these eight songs made it on the band’s
Very Best Of, which should say it all. This is Supertramp’s
best album and a high point of the progressive-pop subcategory, but
it’s also a testament to the emotion prog-rock bands were often
accused of lacking.