Sunday, August 09, 2009
A+E, Music, Reviews

Cheap Trick

“THE LATEST”  (CHEAP TRICK UNLIMITED)

The pride of Rockford, Ill., celebrates its 34th (or so) anniversary in 2009, with all the original members intact. That’s a remarkable achievement in itself, but more impressive is that Cheap Trick’s new album is one of the quartet’s finest studio efforts in as long as anyone can remember.

    Instead of submerging their Beatles infatuation underneath rocking hooks, the band shamelessly exposes them on the majority of these 13 tracks. While the results occasionally sound more like ELO, especially on the string-drenched “Everybody Knows” and the rocked-out “Alive,” there’s plenty of life left in this musical collaboration. Except for a rollicking cover of Slade’s thumping “When the Lights Are Out,” the songs are co-written by all four members, and that camaraderie shows in the performances. They crackle with short-circuited electrical current, plugging into a somewhat psychedelic attack that never gets waylaid by heavy overdubs. Beatles-style strings even turn the sumptuous “Times of Our Lives” into something worthy of inclusion on “Sgt. Pepper’s.”
 
    Perhaps a few less ballads would be in order, but even the trite lyrics of “These Days” never seem lackadaisical, due to an outsized singalong melody that successfully aims for the rafters. 

    Singer Robin Zander is inspired throughout, and when he and drummer Bun E. Carlos tear into “California Girl,” likely inspired by their classic cover of Roy Wood’s “California Man,” you’ll be convinced that Cheap Trick is just as vital and energized now as at any time in the band’s storied career. 3.5 STARS—Hal Horowitz