Another
Cheap Trick reissue from SPV, rereleased in the wake of the success of this year's studio release, 'Rockford'. And why not.
We expect too much from our heroes. Great album after great album (one a year please). Exciting and sonically sound live albums (these don't have to be so frequent, thanks).
Cheap Trick are one of my heroes. But "album after great album"? Sadly not. "Exciting live albums"? Well, yes actually, and the 2 CD set, 'Silver' (2001) is no exception.
Recorded in their home town of Rockford Illinois, in front of a naturally partisan crowd, with special guests Slash, Billy Corgan and Tod Howarth, the 'Trick show just why they are still around after 25 years (thus the album title). The album quality may have been inconsistent over the years, but this is a selection of truly great songs.
Muscular riffs, inviting hooks, smart lyrics and pop brio.
Candy striped songs that seldom slide into saccharine sweetness; abrasive songs that cut through our consciousness like a knife; remarkably sustained melodies and songs about lost and obsessive love that always seem to have a realistic edge. It's all here, in all its magnificence, with a selection from pretty well every album the band have ever released.
The atmosphere was very clearly 'local band made good and has come back to say thanks', but in among all this celebration there are some damn fine live performances. A nine minute version of 'Gonna Raise Hell' is disc one's roof raiser. All other songs seem to orbit this central, anchoring moment. It's also impressive to hear that 25 years on Zander's still got it. No question. The voice has audibly coarsened - there are a few miles on the clock now - but he still delivers. 'Voices' is absolutely incandescent. It's not easy carving out three minutes of intimacy in a cauldron of noise, but that's what Zander does with 'I Can't Take It', and he can still hit those high notes on 'Take Me To The Top', one of the few standouts from 'The Doctor' album. In fact the whole band sounds watertight from the moment they launch Fats Domino's 'Ain't That A Shame' into a receptive audience. A superb curtain raiser, with brief flickers of the Byrds and the Beatles shining brightly. Respect.
Disc two is more of the same and then some. It's also a chance for the band members to indulge in a little nepotism.
Various Neilsen & Zander offspring help out here and there, but their contributions are largely anonymous. On the other hand, Tod Howarth's keyboards and shadowing vocals make Zander (and the band in general) sound positively heroic.
'The Flame' is still clearly the most accessible
Cheap Trick song not written by either Neilsen or Zander, but it's only on hearing all these songs back to back - 'Stop This Game', 'Dream Police' and 'I Know What I Want' for example - that you are reminded of the strong subversive thread running through the band's songs, an attribute that's attracted the disenfranchised and the disaffected, just as much as the catchy melodies and hooky choruses have seduced the well heeled and well adjusted.
The previous year's 'Special One' steered that pot pouri of glitzy, tuneful weirdness back onto safer ground, but to hear 25 years' worth you need to buy 'Silver'
Written by
Brian Wednesday, October 11, 2006
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