5 keepers
keeper avg .217
Though not every track sounds like it, the album is the band's "first stab at professionalism, being recorded in 24 track studios rather than their customary 4 track," while also being the last album with the (initial) "classic" Tobin Sprout, Mitch Mitchell, Kevin Fennell line-up (or the last before the Doug Gillard era).The frantic, speedy album-opener "Man Called Aerodynamics" is kind of a mess, and sounds more like the four-track option. The chugging, all downstroke "Rhine Jive Click" (the "crowded gymnasiums no shortage of knockouts" song) is the first evidence of "upgraded" recording technology, but still has the hallmarks of a characteristically brief Bob Pollard song-sketch. "Cut Out Witch"****, the album's most memorable track and a unique-sounding sounding song in all of rock, goes from zero to runaway train, features a menacing riff, and stops and starts several times, all in just over 3-minutes.
As we've come to expect and love there are several classic Who's Next victory anthems, including "The Official Ironmen Rally Song"****, the bombastic but powerful (however muddy-sounding) "Lord of Overstock"*****, and "Don't Stop Now"**** (which is similar to "Metal Mothers" from Propeller). They kick it into overdrive on the "Game Of Pricks"-like "Your Name Is Wild"**** and the similar "Ghosts of a Different Dream", and develop atmosphere with a slow, deliberate pace on the acoustic "Acorns & Orioles" ("I can't tell you anything you don't already know" with cavernous reverb) and slow-burner "Redmen & Their Wives."
Tobin Sprout contributes power-pop via R.E.M. with "Atom Eyes"****, "It's Like Soul Man" (similar), and the goofy, sproingy "To Remake the Young Flyer" (the guitar says "aah-oom-bah-eem-bah" with a phaser pedal). The rest are merely somewhat rocking or annoyingly lackluster ("Burning Flag Birthday Suit", "No Sky", "Look At Them"), except for the memorable but fatally-flawed closing song-sketch "Take to the Sky," a killer acoustic guitar riff with a mangled vocal melody.
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