Published on Jul 15, 2000
Rock and roll’s most underappreciated experimentalist, Todd
Rundgren, is back with his first collection of all new (well,
almost all new — we’ll get to that in a minute) material in half a
decade, and while it’s not a disappointing set, it does leave us
wishing there were just a little more to it.
First of all,
One Long Year is only 42 minutes long. That was more than
enough in the ’70s when Rundgren was cranking out an album a year,
sometimes two if you count those with his band Utopia. But in the
current musical environment without those vinyl limitations, it’s
rather skimpy. Ironically, many of Rundgren’s ’70s albums ran
nearly an hour, as he crammed as much into those tiny grooves as he
could. Now he’s only using half of the storage capability of the
current CD format, which is kind of odd for an artist who in the
past has usually been ahead of his time.
Secondly, there are two tracks which are not new at all. “Bang
On The Ukelele Daily” is a live Hawaiian folk style reworking of
his mega-overplayed (and overrated in my opinion) 1983 hit “Bang On
the Drum All Day.” It’s cute, no doubt about that, but has no place
sitting right in the middle of a new studio album. Neither does the
bossa nova version of “Love Of The Common Man.” At least the
original (which was on 1976’s
Faithful LP) of this is worth rehashing, but this is quite
obviously a leftover from
With A Twist, Rundgren’s recent CD of bossa nova covers of
his own old songs. To include it here rather than something new
comes across as more of an act of laziness than anything else. So
now we’re really down to only slightly over half an hour’s worth of
actual new material.
But length aside, the remaining tracks are some of Rundgren’s
best in years. Much to the probable joy of many of his fans, he has
dropped the “TR-I” moniker, stopped rapping, and is instead
exploring many of his older styles in new and exciting ways. His
R&B roots are covered on “Buffalo Grass” and “Hit Me Like A
Train,” both sounding straight out of 1989’s excellent (and
overlooked)
Nearly Human album. His progressive-rock past is covered on
the Utopia-esque “The Surf Talks,” complete with his mystical and
irresistibly-pretentious vision. And “Jerk” is an interesting
extension of the industrial and rap styles he explored on his more
recent albums, without actually being a rap song. Of the new
material, only the repetitive instrumental “Mary And The Holy
Ghost” is a throwaway.
The highlights? The most obvious Todd-o-phile pleaser is “Where
Does The Time Go,” one of those timeless sensitive-new-age-guy love
songs that never get stale in Rundgren’s hands as long as that
vintage keyboard keeps chugging along. Who can argue with a chorus
like “Where does the time go when I’m with you / how many hours do
I lose every day / they recombine when I’m missing you / slowing me
down like a digital delay?” It’s as good as “Hideaway,” “Can We
Still Be Friends,” “I Saw The Light,” and all those others that we
all know and love. It even has a little bit of that lounge beat he
experimented with on
With A Twist.
But the best songs aren’t all old hat, as Rundgren proves on
several tracks that he can sound contemporary, yet still sound like
himself. “I Hate My Frickin’ ISP” is another instant Rundgren
classic, as he harps on the endless dial-up delays – “I’ll never
get back the time that I waste” he sings, over a pounding,
power-rock beat that would make Third Eye Blind jealous. “Yer Fast
(and I Like It)” is a shockingly-PG-13 rated slice of melodic noise
that is far more ‘alternative’ than music that many artists young
enough to be Rundgren’s children are making these days.
There seems to be a running thread, at least among those three
songs, of time slipping away, doesn’t there? It’s too bad that he
doesn’t stretch this further into a sort of concept album. And
there is a somewhat-related disturbing thing going on here – the
beauty of most of Rundgren’s best albums lies in their ability to
create a specific mood. He’s had his pure pop albums (such as
Something / Anything,
Hermit Of Mink Hollow,
Nearly Human), and his albums with one specific type of
experiment (such as the minimalism on
Healing, the rap on
No World Order, or the self-explanatory
A Cappella). But his last release, 1995’s
The Individualist, was startling in its tendencies to jump
all over the place, and that continues here.
The key to appreciating
One Long Year is not to think of it as an album proper, but
more of a Rundgren brainstorm. He admits as much by including a
“ratings legend” in the CD insert, categorizing each song as either
“happy,” “hurty,” “angry,” “dirty” or “dippy” (and incidentally, I
would’ve been the last to say that “Bang The Drum All Day” was
dippy). The best Rundgren albums do, indeed, contain some of each
of those, but they somehow feel a little bit more cohesive than
this one does. Ultimately, we are left crying for more of the
genius we know this man is capable of, especially when considering
the 5 year wait between albums. Here’s hoping Todd Rundgren still
has enough creative juice left in him to go out on a few more
album-long limbs. There is half an hour’s worth of grade A music
here, but that’s only half an album, so it only gets half an A.