Just when you think that Todd Rundgren is getting predictable,
\nhe goes and does something that confuses critics, confounds casual
\nfollowers, and delights his diehard following.<\/p>\n
After a few rather “experimental” albums (
\nA Wizard, A True Star<\/i>,
\nTodd<\/i> and
\nInitiation<\/i> – all albums I admit I still haven’t gotten to
\nyet) and after founding his progressive rock side project Utopia,
\nRundgren took a look back at his roots and recorded
\nFaithful<\/i>, an album that is partially made up of cover tunes,
\npartly of originals. Good gravy, some might have thought, had
\nRundgren finally lost it? However, Rundgren’s staying true to form
\nto the covers (except for one major mistake, which we’ll talk
\nabout) and his uncanny ability to craft pop songs makes
\nFaithful<\/i> a surprisingly strong album and delightful
\nlisten.<\/p>\n
On the six covers, Rundgren occasionally sounds like the singers
\nhe’s replacing. His cover of “Good Vibrations” is impeccable, even
\ndown to the use of the theremin – and he turns in a damn fine Dylan
\nimpersonation on “Most Likely You Go Your Way And I’ll Go Mine”.
\nAnd I defy anyone except for the diehard Beatles fan to not enjoy
\nRundgren’s cover of “Rain.”<\/p>\n
While Rundgren doesn’t even come close to sounding like Jimi
\nHendrix in terms of a singing voice, his cover of “If Six Was Nine”
\nis respectable, and it demonstrates his skills on the six-string.
\nBut Rundgren makes a major mistake on his cover of “Strawberry
\nFields Forever”: Listen closely as the second verse ends, and try
\nto keep time to the beat. Someone – either Rundgren or drummer John
\nWilcox – loses a whole beat, and kicks things off too quickly.
\n(This is more shocking to me because I’ve always considered
\nRundgren to be a perfectionist.) Besides this flub, the cover is
\ntrue to the bone.<\/p>\n
After a whole side of covers,
\nFaithful<\/i> returns to the land of original tunes. Some of the
\nwork here reminds the listener of Rundgren’s masterpiece
\nSomething \/ Anything?<\/i>, working everything from solid rock
\n(“Black And White”) to acoustic-based ballads (“Cliche”) to ’70s
\nsoul (“The Verb “To Love”) into a seamless mixture. Also not lost
\nis Rundgren’s tongue-in-cheek sense of humor, as heard on “When I
\nPray”: “If I should die before I wake \/ Somebody made a big
\nmistake.”<\/p>\n
\nFaithful<\/i> is best remembered for Rundgren’s beatutiful number
\n“Love Of The Common Man,” a song which transcends any genre
\ndescription one might try to pigeonhole the track into. It takes a
\nlisten or two to really appreciate the song, but it quickly shows
\nitself to be one of Rundgren’s most gentle pieces he’s ever
\ndone.<\/p>\n
The only song that I have not been able to get into is “Boogies
\n(Hamburger Hell),” another song that works the dry Rundgren humor
\ninto the mix. Whether it’s a slam against fast food or one
\nparticular restaurant in general I can’t tell (the vocals are a bit
\ndistorted to the point that I can’t decipher them that well), but
\nthe track as a whole is one that just falls a bit flat in
\ncomparison to the rest of the album.<\/p>\n
Even though the mixture of covers and originals works on
\nFaithful<\/i>, one has to wonder why Rundgren and crew (the band
\nwas three-fourths of what would become the “classic” lineup for
\nUtopia) didn’t just stay in one vein. I have no doubt that Rundgren
\ncould have pulled off a whole album of covers and made it sound as
\nfresh as the originals, and his skill at writing original numbers
\nis well-known. Still, this is a mixture that works better than some
\nmight have expected it to.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27778,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5630],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-39161","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-todd-rundgren","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39161","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=39161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39161"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}