San Francisco Bay Area natives the Greg Kihn Band followed a trajectory right out of a novel\u2014a form Kihn himself would later prove proficient at\u2014in its rise from local retro-flavored power-pop favorites to regional hitmakers to brief national and international fame, before flaming out somewhere short of permanent orbit and falling back to earth.<\/p>\n
Kihntinued<\/i>, the 1982 entry in a string of punnily-titled releases from Kihn and band, was the bridge between the hook-heavy album that pushed the band from bars to theaters (1981\u2019s RocKihnRoll<\/i>, featuring the #15 hit single \u201cThe Breakup Song\u201d) and the one that broke them nationwide and beyond (1983\u2019s Kihnspiracy<\/i>, featuring the #2 hit \u201cJeopardy\u201d). It\u2019s an album that found them reaching for a second hit and not finding it, but hardly failing either; it\u2019s a solidly good outing from a band whose weaker moments always felt like part and parcel of their underdog charm.<\/p>\n
The secret ingredient in any Kihn song is energy, and opener \u201cHappy Man\u201d has it in spades, a driving number about chasing your passion in a purposeful way, executed with panache by the dependably punchy team of Kihn (lead vocals and rhythm guitar), Steve Wright (bass and harmony vocals), Larry Lynch (drums and harmony vocals), Dave Carpender (lead guitar) and Gary Phillips (keys). Anyone wondering about Kihn\u2019s musical influences need only listen to the prominent handclaps in the earworm chorus; the man\u2014who had covered both Buddy Holly and Bruce Springsteen by his second album\u2014feels that early \u201960s rock vibe down to his bones. <\/p>\n
The rest of side one (my first copy was vinyl) features a string of Kihn staples: the intense, longing slow-burner (\u201cEvery Love Song\u201d), the boisterous party tune (\u201cEveryday Is Saturday Night\u201d), the sweetly sincere ballad (\u201cDedication\u201d), and the offbeat experiment (\u201cTell Me Lies\u201d tries to make white reggae spooky, with mixed results).<\/p>\n
Side two kicks off with one of the man\u2019s best ever, the ringing anthem \u201cTestify,\u201d catchy from the first chord as it builds to a crescendo that Kihn punctuates at the fade with the playful coda \u201cTake yer shoes off.\u201d Unfortunately, \u201cSound System\u201d follows with a stumble, another attempt at reggae that ends up sounding forced and awkward. \u201cSeeing Is Believing\u201d is vintage Kihn in its intensity but doesn\u2019t have much going for it beyond that edge. Closing out the album, Larry Lynch takes the lead vocal for the one cover here, an exuberant run at the Jackie Wilson classic \u201cHigher And Higher,\u201d before Kihn literally brings it home with the gentle ballad \u201cFamily.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kihntinued<\/i> includes all the trappings of the well-received albums that preceded and followed it, lacking only one critical ingredient: a hit single. Either \u201cHappy Man\u201d or \u201cTestify\u201d coulda shoulda filled that bill, but for whatever reason neither caught fire at radio. In the aftermath, lead guitarist Carpender, a reliable presence since 1977\u2019s Greg Kihn Again<\/i>, exited and was replaced by fellow Bay Area scene veteran Greg Douglass. The band would never be quite the same, trading some of the muscle and fun of their earlier work for sheen and polish. They would score that one big hit, alright, but nothing the GKB produced after Kihntinued<\/i> ever delivered quite the same joy and impact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":34379,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7947],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-46216","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-greg-kihn-band","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46216","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\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46216"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46216"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}