Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Cheap Trick
Label: Big Machine Records
Release: 2017
Length: 44:47
Rating: 4/5
These days it’s hard to find a band that has kept going without a break for over four decades, putting out albums full of fire and enthusiasm the whole way and wowing us with consistently high quality. Everything in that sentence applies to the long-lived American rock »rascals« Cheap Trick. You’d expect a band to burn itself out over the years and run dry creatively, for the creativity to have left the building ages ago and for it to start »dragging« itself along on past glory. Cheap Trick don’t know the meaning of it, and they don’t need to.
Barely a year has passed since the more than excellent »Bang, Zoom, Crazy… Hello!«, and they’re already back with its studio successor. Cheap Trick remain devoted to their rock stance, which is instantly recognizable and pretty much one of a kind in the rock’n’roll universe. The new album »We’re All Alright« keeps the chemistry and the stylistic, sonic blueprint of its predecessor, but even so Cheap Trick have delivered a slightly different record once again, which was the whole idea. Keep your trademarks, but without copying old ideas or repackaging them in shiny new wrapping.
The album has ten tracks, and the studio release clocks in at barely 33 minutes. That’s completely in line with the band’s reputation, though. Mind you, a special edition of the album has three extra tracks that are excellent, which really hints that you need to get your hands on the »expanded« version of the new release. Among those three extras, the superb cover of The Move’s Blackberry Way, written by ELO boss Roy Wood, is a must-mention. That’s nothing new for the band. Cheap Trick have always loved playing Roy Wood’s stuff (Rock And Roll Tonight, California Man, Brontosaurus). Also worth singling out among the bonus tracks is Fly On The Wall, whose inspiration owes a debt to The Who around the time of »Who’s Next«. No surprise there either. Cheap Trick have always added a hefty dose of that rock untamedness and wildness, borrowed from Kinks and The Who, topped with a pinch of the early glam rock wave, represented by, among others, the famous »snarkers« Slade. They’ve also always deftly worked a hairdo of punk dirt into their sound, and on the flip side a distinct musicality that often flirted with the look and work of The Beatles. The new album doesn’t stray from that either, and Cheap Trick once again blend all these pinches into a one-of-a-kind musical conglomerate that is, of course, their trademark.
The new album once again delivers a bagful of lucidity and fun, and the band sounds as if its members were untamed 25-year-old studs with nothing in their heads but mischief. A track like Radio Lover, for instance, is of older origin; the band felt now was the right time to use it on an album. Among the new album’s tracks there’s the especially bitey Lolita, a »toxic« glam rock boogie number of the kind bands made in the golden era of (glam) rock and roll (the seventies). Otherwise the album delivers an incredible, adrenaline-octane rock’n’roll jolt from the first second to the last. Especially with the very »attacking« You Got It Going On and Long Time Coming right at the start of the album, soon joined by the punkish Nowhere, and in the second half by the hugely fun Brand New Name On An Old Tattoo. Zander remains an outstanding vocalist. Not a speck of rust or age-related staleness clings to his voice. He ripens like good old wine, while Rick Nielsen wields a whole bagful of still-unused guitar phrases and ideas, which he shakes out of his sleeve on the new album again like it’s nothing. Riffs full of primal rock’n’roll voodoo feel “super familiar”, and the subconscious insists they’ve been heard and used somewhere before. But never worn out. Just incredibly fresh and irrevocably igniting.
Cheap Trick have no plans to get old. Not for a long time yet, not with albums like »We’re All Alright«. The album grabs you from start to finish, and with it the band proves that, in fact, with this one they’re already neatly set up to make the next studio follow-up. A band that won’t be running out of dynamite anytime soon, and a band that gives off the feeling it’s only just started its career and has to prove itself with everything it’s got. In that respect the quartet really comes across as a gang of wild kids tossed around every which way by an excess of testosterone. May it stay that way.
Cheap Trick – Long TIme Coming (official audio):
Lineup
Robin Zander – vocals, backing vocals, guitar
Rick Nielsen – guitar, backing vocals
Tom Petersson – bass guitar, backing vocals
Daxx Nielsen – drums, backing vocals
Production
Cheap Trick & Julian Raymond
Track list
1. You Got It Going On (3:11)
2. Long Time Coming (3:12)
3. Nowhere (2:45)
4. Radio Lover (2:46)
5. Lolita (3:16)
6. Brand New Name on an Old Tattoo (3:32)
7. Floating Down (3:49)
8. She’s Alright (3:39)
9. Listen to Me (3:13)
10. The Rest of My Life (4:18)
11. Blackberry Way (3:13)
12. Like a Fly (3:22)
13. If You Still Want My Love (4:23)
