Rock and roll’s most underappreciated experimentalist, Todd
\nRundgren, is back with his first collection of all new (well,
\nalmost all new — we’ll get to that in a minute) material in half a
\ndecade, and while it’s not a disappointing set, it does leave us
\nwishing there were just a little more to it.<\/p>\n
First of all,
\nOne Long Year<\/i> is only 42 minutes long. That was more than
\nenough in the ’70s when Rundgren was cranking out an album a year,
\nsometimes two if you count those with his band Utopia. But in the
\ncurrent musical environment without those vinyl limitations, it’s
\nrather skimpy. Ironically, many of Rundgren’s ’70s albums ran
\nnearly an hour, as he crammed as much into those tiny grooves as he
\ncould. Now he’s only using half of the storage capability of the
\ncurrent CD format, which is kind of odd for an artist who in the
\npast has usually been ahead of his time.<\/p>\n
Secondly, there are two tracks which are not new at all. “Bang
\nOn The Ukelele Daily” is a live Hawaiian folk style reworking of
\nhis mega-overplayed (and overrated in my opinion) 1983 hit “Bang On
\nthe Drum All Day.” It’s cute, no doubt about that, but has no place
\nsitting right in the middle of a new studio album. Neither does the
\nbossa nova version of “Love Of The Common Man.” At least the
\noriginal (which was on 1976’s
\nFaithful<\/i> LP) of this is worth rehashing, but this is quite
\nobviously a leftover from
\nWith A Twist<\/i>, Rundgren’s recent CD of bossa nova covers of
\nhis own old songs. To include it here rather than something new
\ncomes across as more of an act of laziness than anything else. So
\nnow we’re really down to only slightly over half an hour’s worth of
\nactual new material.<\/p>\n
But length aside, the remaining tracks are some of Rundgren’s
\nbest in years. Much to the probable joy of many of his fans, he has
\ndropped the “TR-I” moniker, stopped rapping, and is instead
\nexploring many of his older styles in new and exciting ways. His
\nR&B roots are covered on “Buffalo Grass” and “Hit Me Like A
\nTrain,” both sounding straight out of 1989’s excellent (and
\noverlooked)
\nNearly Human<\/i> album. His progressive-rock past is covered on
\nthe Utopia-esque “The Surf Talks,” complete with his mystical and
\nirresistibly-pretentious vision. And “Jerk” is an interesting
\nextension of the industrial and rap styles he explored on his more
\nrecent albums, without actually being a rap song. Of the new
\nmaterial, only the repetitive instrumental “Mary And The Holy
\nGhost” is a throwaway.<\/p>\n
The highlights? The most obvious Todd-o-phile pleaser is “Where
\nDoes The Time Go,” one of those timeless sensitive-new-age-guy love
\nsongs that never get stale in Rundgren’s hands as long as that
\nvintage keyboard keeps chugging along. Who can argue with a chorus
\nlike “Where does the time go when I’m with you \/ how many hours do
\nI lose every day \/ they recombine when I’m missing you \/ slowing me
\ndown like a digital delay?” It’s as good as “Hideaway,” “Can We
\nStill Be Friends,” “I Saw The Light,” and all those others that we
\nall know and love. It even has a little bit of that lounge beat he
\nexperimented with on
\nWith A Twist<\/i>.<\/p>\n
But the best songs aren’t all old hat, as Rundgren proves on
\nseveral tracks that he can sound contemporary, yet still sound like
\nhimself. “I Hate My Frickin’ ISP” is another instant Rundgren
\nclassic, as he harps on the endless dial-up delays – “I’ll never
\nget back the time that I waste” he sings, over a pounding,
\npower-rock beat that would make Third Eye Blind jealous. “Yer Fast
\n(and I Like It)” is a shockingly-PG-13 rated slice of melodic noise
\nthat is far more ‘alternative’ than music that many artists young
\nenough to be Rundgren’s children are making these days.<\/p>\n
There seems to be a running thread, at least among those three
\nsongs, of time slipping away, doesn’t there? It’s too bad that he
\ndoesn’t stretch this further into a sort of concept album. And
\nthere is a somewhat-related disturbing thing going on here – the
\nbeauty of most of Rundgren’s best albums lies in their ability to
\ncreate a specific mood. He’s had his pure pop albums (such as
\nSomething \/ Anything<\/i>,
\nHermit Of Mink Hollow<\/i>,
\nNearly Human<\/i>), and his albums with one specific type of
\nexperiment (such as the minimalism on
\nHealing<\/i>, the rap on
\nNo World Order<\/i>, or the self-explanatory
\nA Cappella<\/i>). But his last release, 1995’s
\nThe Individualist<\/i>, was startling in its tendencies to jump
\nall over the place, and that continues here.<\/p>\n
The key to appreciating
\nOne Long Year<\/i> is not to think of it as an album proper, but
\nmore of a Rundgren brainstorm. He admits as much by including a
\n“ratings legend” in the CD insert, categorizing each song as either
\n“happy,” “hurty,” “angry,” “dirty” or “dippy” (and incidentally, I
\nwould’ve been the last to say that “Bang The Drum All Day” was
\ndippy). The best Rundgren albums do, indeed, contain some of each
\nof those, but they somehow feel a little bit more cohesive than
\nthis one does. Ultimately, we are left crying for more of the
\ngenius we know this man is capable of, especially when considering
\nthe 5 year wait between albums. Here’s hoping Todd Rundgren still
\nhas enough creative juice left in him to go out on a few more
\nalbum-long limbs. There is half an hour’s worth of grade A music
\nhere, but that’s only half an album, so it only gets half an A.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":25474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5630],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-36680","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-todd-rundgren","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36680","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\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36680"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36680"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}