3 keepers
keeper avg .375
Supertramp's third album was their first to achieve significant success, containing the band's two first charting singles, and featuring 3 new members, drummer Bob Siebenberg, saxophone / clarinet player / vocalist John Helliwell, and bassist Dougie Thomson. It begins with the anxious "School"****, a mid-tempo rocker broken up by a fast Rick Davies piano interlude where they turn into Jethro Tull, followed by Davies' defiant and cheeky classic rock radio staple "Bloody Well Right"****, their first charting single in the US. Going in order, Roger Hodgson's "Hide in Your Shell"****, the album's poppiest song for sure, goes on an interesting melodic journey, and introduces the formula for later hits like "The Logical Song"(1979). Davies' Elton John-y music hall ballad "Asylum" closes the first side.
Success in their native UK came via Hodgson's effervescent top 20-charting "Dreamer," which opens side 2; between Hodgson's helium vocal and frantic Wurlitzer pounding it's especially twee before twee was even a thing. After this point the album bogs down considerably with slow tempos and proggy diversions. At over 7-minutes Davies' "Rudy" certainly crams in enough sections to flirt with prog, interestingly getting funky in places. The album winds down with the leisurely "If Everyone Was Listening," which resembles The Band, and closes with the ponderous title song, which sounds like pre-breakup Pink Floyd (when they really started to suck a few years down the road). Actually, both of the album-side closing tracks start as pretty dull, only to be salvaged by dramatic orchestral-rock codas; indeed, the end of "Asylum" is one of the album's pinnacles, with each line building increasing tension, and Davies delightfully concluding by howling maniacally.
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