Throughout his career Todd Rundgren has been known to throw listeners complete curveballs from album to album; beyond that, he\u2019s not been afraid to potentially sabotage his own success in order to follow the musical visions he\u2019s had.<\/p>\n
Runt. The Ballad Of Todd Rundgren<\/i> potentially was the first such curveball. While his debut solo effort Runt<\/i> could hardly have been called a hit factory (despite having the track \u201cWe Gotta Get You A Woman\u201d), Rundgren began moving towards becoming a one-man band at times on this one, and moved away from tracks that could have been AM fodder\u2014remember AM radio, kids?\u2014and followed what he perceived to be the natural next direction of his music. It\u2019s confusing at times, but listenable\u2014even if you sometimes find yourself wishing that Rundgren would simply kick out the jams and let the music flow.<\/i><\/p>\n
When Rundgren does<\/i> let the music stretch out and become more rock-oriented, the album finds its greatest success. The opening track \u201cLong Flowing Robe\u201d might have needed additional development in terms of lyrical content, but is a solid way to start off the musical journey. Similarly, \u201cChain Letter\u201d is the closest thing we get to hearing Rundgren the rock star, and even though it\u2019s the longest track at just over five minutes, one wishes it had stretched out even longer.<\/i><\/p>\n
Often, Rundgren settles into the concept of being a rock balladeer\u2014and this strategy works more often than it fails. Tracks like \u201cBleeding,\u201d \u201cWailing Wall\u201d and \u201cBe Nice To Me\u201d all clearly pointed to the direction that Rundgren\u2019s music was headed with his next effort Something\/Anything<\/i>, even if he was still hashing out the fine points of creating such songs. Others, like \u201cThe Range War\u201d and \u201cBoat On The Charles,\u201d don\u2019t quite reach the target, the former being the silliest of them all.<\/i><\/p>\n
It could well be that Runt. The Ballad Of Todd Rundgren<\/i> is not the kind of album that one can get away with just a cursory listen to. There is some depth to the album that begs for the full attention of the listener\u2014and, more often than not, that effort pays off. But even with three albums with The Nazz and one solo effort under his belt, Rundgren was still playing the role of the grand experimenter, not quite knowing how his efforts were going to turn out but accepting them as they were created. In the case of a few tracks like \u201cParole\u201d and \u201cBoat On The Charles,\u201d perhaps a bit more attention to detail would have proven beneficial.<\/i><\/p>\n
Rundgren would stumble into success one album later, and while the groundwork for that success is clearly heard being laid on this album, it showed that a few coats of polish were still needed. Runt. The Ballad Of Todd Rundgren<\/i> is an interesting snapshot of the artist as a young man, but it suggests the photo wasn\u2019t quite fully developed\u2014yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5630],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-46649","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-todd-rundgren","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46649","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=46649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46649"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}