Just when you think that Todd Rundgren is getting predictable,
he goes and does something that confuses critics, confounds casual
followers, and delights his diehard following.
After a few rather “experimental” albums (
A Wizard, A True Star,
Todd and
Initiation – all albums I admit I still haven’t gotten to
yet) and after founding his progressive rock side project Utopia,
Rundgren took a look back at his roots and recorded
Faithful, an album that is partially made up of cover tunes,
partly of originals. Good gravy, some might have thought, had
Rundgren finally lost it? However, Rundgren’s staying true to form
to the covers (except for one major mistake, which we’ll talk
about) and his uncanny ability to craft pop songs makes
Faithful a surprisingly strong album and delightful
listen.
On the six covers, Rundgren occasionally sounds like the singers
he’s replacing. His cover of “Good Vibrations” is impeccable, even
down to the use of the theremin – and he turns in a damn fine Dylan
impersonation on “Most Likely You Go Your Way And I’ll Go Mine”.
And I defy anyone except for the diehard Beatles fan to not enjoy
Rundgren’s cover of “Rain.”
While Rundgren doesn’t even come close to sounding like Jimi
Hendrix in terms of a singing voice, his cover of “If Six Was Nine”
is respectable, and it demonstrates his skills on the six-string.
But Rundgren makes a major mistake on his cover of “Strawberry
Fields Forever”: Listen closely as the second verse ends, and try
to keep time to the beat. Someone – either Rundgren or drummer John
Wilcox – loses a whole beat, and kicks things off too quickly.
(This is more shocking to me because I’ve always considered
Rundgren to be a perfectionist.) Besides this flub, the cover is
true to the bone.
After a whole side of covers,
Faithful returns to the land of original tunes. Some of the
work here reminds the listener of Rundgren’s masterpiece
Something / Anything?, working everything from solid rock
(“Black And White”) to acoustic-based ballads (“Cliche”) to ’70s
soul (“The Verb “To Love”) into a seamless mixture. Also not lost
is Rundgren’s tongue-in-cheek sense of humor, as heard on “When I
Pray”: “If I should die before I wake / Somebody made a big
mistake.”
Faithful is best remembered for Rundgren’s beatutiful number
“Love Of The Common Man,” a song which transcends any genre
description one might try to pigeonhole the track into. It takes a
listen or two to really appreciate the song, but it quickly shows
itself to be one of Rundgren’s most gentle pieces he’s ever
done.
The only song that I have not been able to get into is “Boogies
(Hamburger Hell),” another song that works the dry Rundgren humor
into the mix. Whether it’s a slam against fast food or one
particular restaurant in general I can’t tell (the vocals are a bit
distorted to the point that I can’t decipher them that well), but
the track as a whole is one that just falls a bit flat in
comparison to the rest of the album.
Even though the mixture of covers and originals works on
Faithful, one has to wonder why Rundgren and crew (the band
was three-fourths of what would become the “classic” lineup for
Utopia) didn’t just stay in one vein. I have no doubt that Rundgren
could have pulled off a whole album of covers and made it sound as
fresh as the originals, and his skill at writing original numbers
is well-known. Still, this is a mixture that works better than some
might have expected it to.
