Over the course of the last century, an album’s cover art has served many functions: ingredient list, billboard, history lesson, artistic statement. On rare occasions, an album cover has told an entire story.
The front cover of Kihntagious—the swan song of the original Greg Kihn Band—is a disorienting double-image of a line of dominos against a shadowy backdrop, ready to fall, with the larger ones in the foreground tinted an urgent crimson. It’s artsy and eye-catching and somewhat foreboding.
That dark energy is amplified on the back cover, where the rest of the story is told: the five bandmembers spread out amongst a small forest of giant, kitschy domino cut-outs, with stark front-lighting cutting deep shadows. Bassist Steve Wright peeks out playfully from behind a domino on the left, with a neutral expression; the other four all face front… and every one of them looks tired and unhappy.
The final lineup of the original GKB—Kihn (lead vocals, guitar), Wright (bass, vocals), Larry Lynch (drums, vocals), Gary Phillips (keys, guitar, vocals), and Greg Douglass (lead guitar)—had to be exhausted when they entered the studio to make this album. Previous album Kihnspiracy’s clavinet-driven hit “Jeopardy” had kept them on the road for virtually all of calendar year 1983, and (according to Lynch) members of the band had been indulging in many of the unhealthy habits one associates with the phrase “hit single in the early ’80s.”
Singer-songwriter Kihn had come up through the Bay Area club scene, with Wright and Lynch by his side from very early days, adding original GKB guitarist Dave Carpender and then Phillips as the band’s retrophile power-pop graduated to bigger halls and bigger recording budgets. They’d scored a #15 hit with 1981’s “The Breakup Song (They Don’t Write ’Em)” and then “Jeopardy” catapulted them into national headliner status.
Success can be a blessing, or a curse, or sometimes both at the same time. “Jeopardy” helped Kihn and band achieve the kind of commercial success they’d been chasing for most of a decade—success that appears to have doomed the band.
The first thing to say about the music found on Kihntagious is that the “Jeopardy” influence is strong and obvious, with greater emphasis on keyboards and the rhythm section, and less on guitars. There’s even another clavinet-driven number (the ironically-named “Rock”) sitting in the same second position “Jeopardy” held on Kihnspiracy, but for all its assets—chiefly a solid groove and bassline—it’s no “Jeopardy.”
Much of the rest of the album feels like it suffers under the same weight of expectations and anxiety. Album opener “Reunited” was designed to be a thematic sequel “Jeopardy” (they got back together), but is very different sonically, a driving rocker fueled by churning rhythm guitar; it has momentum going for it, but there’s an essential ingredient missing: joy. “Rock” follows, feeling like a second-tier retread, and then “Make Up” arrives with a nod to Kihn’s early-’60s affections; if only the bouncy bassline wasn’t thoroughly undermined by the cheesy synth tones.
“Stand Together” is one of the stronger cuts here, a guitar-and-drums anthem with abundant drive and a strong Kihn-Wright-Lynch vocal arrangement. Unfortunately, it’s followed by one of the weakest. Kihn’s recurring Achilles heel was a thing for reggae; it pops up on many of his albums and never quite works. On this album’s “Confrontation Music,” he gives it a dark cast for an anti-war number that just feels like a jumble of incompatible ideas and awful keyboard tones.
The album’s keyboard focus undermines the next four tracks pretty thoroughly. “One Thing About Love” is the best of this bunch, an intense, bass-driven r&b number where the strong rhythm section feels out of sync tonally with the crinkly Douglass guitar and cheesy keys. Kihn gets earnest on “Worst That Could Happen,” whose chorus harmonies are its main redeeming quality. “Trouble With The Girl” is every ’80s pop cliché crammed into a single track, exceeded only by the album’s requisite cover “Cheri Baby,” a horror show of chirpy synths and tinny drums.
Thankfully, they finish up with two of this album’s best. “Hard Times,” a Kihn-Lynch-Wright cowrite, is a throwback to the kind of early-rock homage the GKB always excelled at, featuring an urgent rhythm section, counterpoint vocals from Lynch on the choruses, and a tight, pushing Douglass solo. Similarly retrophile closer “Work, Work, Work”—a rocking rant that feels directed at the band’s own exhaustion—is played in the full-tilt style of earlier rave-ups like “Cold Hard Cash” from 1978’s Next Of Kihn. In its own way, it makes for both a nice callback and fitting end to the classic era of the Greg Kihn Band.
While Kihn blamed the album’s failure on lack of label support—certainly a factor—it’s also true that Kihntagious is a decidedly mixed bag, with a handful of strong songs and Wright’s consistently punchy bass work its only real highlights. On the tour supporting the album, the band began to fray at the seams, with rock and roll excess, exhaustion and egos all playing a role. By the time Kihn returned with solo album Citizen Kihn a year later, Lynch and Phillips were gone and the Band era was in Kihn’s rearview mirror.
