Fans of eclectic rock
\nartiste<\/i> Todd Rundgren freely admit that his changing musical
\ndirections occasionally throw them for a loop. Rundgren is one of
\nthe only musicians who openly challenges the listener to open their
\nmusical horizons and travel the road according to his rules.<\/p>\n
But the negative press I’ve read for Rundgren’s 1993
\nexperimental album
\nNo World Order<\/i> has shocked me. The prestigious All-Music
\nGuide has rated this disc as “Poor.” Even my aunt, a self-professed
\ndrooling Rundgren fan, said as she threw a copy of this disc into
\nmy hands, “You’re gonna hate it.”<\/p>\n
But while
\nNo World Order<\/i> is indeed a different direction for Rundgren,
\nit’s not radically different from other roads he’s taken on his
\ncareer – and the end result is actually a very good album.<\/p>\n
Maybe what turned some people off of this one was “hip-hop Todd”
\n– Rundgren indulges in a few raps on
\nNo World Order<\/i>. Maybe it was the more electronic, dare I say
\neven industrial, tone to the music. Maybe it was the advanced
\ntechnology of the album; if you bought the interactive CD, you
\ncould shape the music into whatever format you wanted to. (I have
\nthe PC version of this, released around the same time by Electronic
\nArts, though I haven’t spent a lot of time playing with it yet. One
\nword of caution: if you run it on Windows 95, don’t make changes as
\nthe disc is playing, or your system will freeze.)<\/p>\n
The fact is, Rundgren does experiment a little bit with
\nindustrial and rap on
\nNo World Order<\/i>, and these experiments are rather successful.
\n“Day Job” is a decent enough song, and “Fascist Christ,” whose
\nmeaning I still have yet to grasp, is a delightful curve ball that
\nRundgren throws at the listener.<\/p>\n
As much as I enjoyed the title track and “Worldwide Epiphany,”
\nthough, I almost would have preferred that Rundgren not broken the
\ntrack up throughout the album. I am left to wonder how the tracks
\nas a whole would have sounded. On the other hand, I will admit it
\nwas kind of nice to hear the snippets from time to time.<\/p>\n
In one sense, what Rundgren recorded for
\nNo World Order<\/i> was not radically different from his two
\nreleases from around that time,
\nNearly Human<\/i> and
\n2nd Wind<\/i>. “Property” is classic Rundgren power-pop, as is
\n“Love Thing” and another split song, “Time Stood Still”. They may
\nnot rank among the greats like the hits from
\nSomething \/ Anything?<\/i>, but they hold up well on their
\nown.<\/p>\n
So why is
\nNo World Order<\/i> looked upon with such disdain by other
\ncritics? Maybe it was because, like he has been most of his career,
\nRundgren was ahead of his time, and we just weren’t ready for his
\nvision. But if we think about it, the ability to remix his songs is
\nnothing that different from what is done to the hits today, where
\nwe can hear radically different versions of songs from artists like
\nMariah Carey. The difference here was that not only did Rundgren
\nencourage the changes, he helps you make them.<\/p>\n
The only real weakness I have noticed with
\nNo World Order<\/i> is that some of the songs don’t hold up as
\nwell over repeated listenings, and it is a little bit of a
\nchallenge to stay focused throughout the whole disc. I’m not
\npositive what could have been done to rectify this, if anything –
\nfor that matter, I seem to recall having similar problems getting
\nthrough
\n2nd Wind<\/i> some years ago, so maybe it was just the musical
\nstyle Rundgren had settled into, and not this particular album. (To
\nbe fair, I’ll eventually get to
\n2nd Wind<\/i> again and review it here.)<\/p>\n
\nNo World Order<\/i> may well be the most maligned album of
\nRundgren’s vast discography, and it is a reputation that is not
\nfair to label it with. It may not rank among the best, but it is an
\nenjoyable enough listen – provided you are willing to let Rundgren
\ndrive.<\/p>\n
\nAuthor’s Note: The disc I reviewed was the original release
\nof<\/i> No World Order
\n; as it appears to be off the market, the cover art and Music
\nBoulevard link are for<\/i> No World Order Lite
\n. According to those who reponded to a question I asked in<\/i>
\nalt.music.todd-rundgren
\n, the only difference is the newer version lets the songs fade
\nout; the original version has all the tracks segue into each other.
\nThanks to all who took the time to help clear this up for
\nme.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5630],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-35854","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-todd-rundgren","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35854"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=35854"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=35854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}