Published on Jan 7, 1998
Fans of eclectic rock
artiste Todd Rundgren freely admit that his changing musical
directions occasionally throw them for a loop. Rundgren is one of
the only musicians who openly challenges the listener to open their
musical horizons and travel the road according to his rules.
But the negative press I’ve read for Rundgren’s 1993
experimental album
No World Order has shocked me. The prestigious All-Music
Guide has rated this disc as “Poor.” Even my aunt, a self-professed
drooling Rundgren fan, said as she threw a copy of this disc into
my hands, “You’re gonna hate it.”
But while
No World Order is indeed a different direction for Rundgren,
it’s not radically different from other roads he’s taken on his
career – and the end result is actually a very good album.
Maybe what turned some people off of this one was “hip-hop Todd”
– Rundgren indulges in a few raps on
No World Order. Maybe it was the more electronic, dare I say
even industrial, tone to the music. Maybe it was the advanced
technology of the album; if you bought the interactive CD, you
could shape the music into whatever format you wanted to. (I have
the PC version of this, released around the same time by Electronic
Arts, though I haven’t spent a lot of time playing with it yet. One
word of caution: if you run it on Windows 95, don’t make changes as
the disc is playing, or your system will freeze.)
The fact is, Rundgren does experiment a little bit with
industrial and rap on
No World Order, and these experiments are rather successful.
“Day Job” is a decent enough song, and “Fascist Christ,” whose
meaning I still have yet to grasp, is a delightful curve ball that
Rundgren throws at the listener.
As much as I enjoyed the title track and “Worldwide Epiphany,”
though, I almost would have preferred that Rundgren not broken the
track up throughout the album. I am left to wonder how the tracks
as a whole would have sounded. On the other hand, I will admit it
was kind of nice to hear the snippets from time to time.
In one sense, what Rundgren recorded for
No World Order was not radically different from his two
releases from around that time,
Nearly Human and
2nd Wind. “Property” is classic Rundgren power-pop, as is
“Love Thing” and another split song, “Time Stood Still”. They may
not rank among the greats like the hits from
Something / Anything?, but they hold up well on their
own.
So why is
No World Order looked upon with such disdain by other
critics? Maybe it was because, like he has been most of his career,
Rundgren was ahead of his time, and we just weren’t ready for his
vision. But if we think about it, the ability to remix his songs is
nothing that different from what is done to the hits today, where
we can hear radically different versions of songs from artists like
Mariah Carey. The difference here was that not only did Rundgren
encourage the changes, he helps you make them.
The only real weakness I have noticed with
No World Order is that some of the songs don’t hold up as
well over repeated listenings, and it is a little bit of a
challenge to stay focused throughout the whole disc. I’m not
positive what could have been done to rectify this, if anything –
for that matter, I seem to recall having similar problems getting
through
2nd Wind some years ago, so maybe it was just the musical
style Rundgren had settled into, and not this particular album. (To
be fair, I’ll eventually get to
2nd Wind again and review it here.)
No World Order may well be the most maligned album of
Rundgren’s vast discography, and it is a reputation that is not
fair to label it with. It may not rank among the best, but it is an
enjoyable enough listen – provided you are willing to let Rundgren
drive.
Author’s Note: The disc I reviewed was the original release
of No World Order
; as it appears to be off the market, the cover art and Music
Boulevard link are for No World Order Lite
. According to those who reponded to a question I asked in
alt.music.todd-rundgren
, the only difference is the newer version lets the songs fade
out; the original version has all the tracks segue into each other.
Thanks to all who took the time to help clear this up for
me.