A Little Science, A Little Magic...
Daniel and Gloria met at a rock flea market when their hands reached for the one over-priced copy of Hackamore Brick's One Kiss Leads To Another. They fell in love. But lately the relationship has not been going all that well. Rock 'n' roll is tearing them apart as their tastes diverge, and it's gotten to the point where the only new album they listen to together is Rocket To Russia.
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A Little Science, A Little Magic...
RECORDS
CHEAP TRICK
Heaven Tonight
(Epic)
by Mitch Cohen
Daniel and Gloria met at a rock flea market when their hands reached for the one over-priced copy of Hackamore Brick's One Kiss Leads To Another. They fell in love. But lately the relationship has not been going all that well. Rock 'n' roll is tearing them apart as their tastes diverge, and it's gotten to the point where the only new album they listen to together is Rocket To Russia.
"Where," Daniel asked, "is a band that combines good old American know-how with British flair, melody and energy, unique hard rock with a lime twist?"
"One equally at home in 16 or Trouser Press," Gloria added. "With voices and guitars to make my secret spot tremble as though 1 were again a budding schoolgirl in love with Joey Molland."
Well, kids,.wouldya like to go to heaven tonight? Time may not be on your side, but here's something that should aid compatability. As a matter of fact, Cheap Trick's Heaven Tonight may be the alternative for Beatle fans for whom London Town and Bad Boy are the last straw. The achievement isn't as complete as album two, In Color— nothing as charming as "Oh Caroline," as rousing as "Clock Strikes Ten," although the overall hummability quotient remains high— but Cheap Trick are a foursome, who, at their best, fuse some of the strengths of Lennon and McCartney into a tuneful, eccentric Midwest/Anglophile rock 'n' roll mix.
Heaven Tonight is matureCheap Trick; by now, they generally know what they're doing, how to use the studio, how to sublimate their outre tendencies and streamline their neo-Abbey Road sound in something more palatable to mainstream taste. Their dummying up will probably spare them the fate of such progenitors as Move/Wizzard, Sparks, lOcc, who outsmarted themselves, but the blatant bid for the big time on this, the crucial third LP, also makes much of the music less delightful than it could be.
Still Heaven Tonight has the same precision, ingenuity and song sense that made In Color one of last year's most entertaining old wave R&R albums. Rick Neilsen's lyrics on "Surrender" are pretty funny—they deal with parental advice, and wind up with mom and dad turning on and listening to Kiss —but what makes the song such a marvel is the damnably contagious cheerfulness with which Robin Zander belts the chorus: "Mommy's all right, Daddy's all right/They just seem a little weird/Surrender, surrender/But don't give yourself away." Other tracks are as winning: "Heaven Tonight," with its hypnotic guitar pattern, late-Beatlesque atmosphere and Robin's breathy invitation, sounds like an initiation ritual in some sex church; "How Are You" does whimsical Paul McC better (and even cuter) than anything on Wings' last three albums; their Move homage ("California Man") is straight-ahead encore material; and "On Top Of The World" is convincingly aggressive and metallic.
Cheap Trick does have touches of manipulative genius that diminish the faults of the weaker cuts, like Zander's wry syllable-bending, sudden structural shifts that can disarm you even in the midst of a horrid piece of braggart rock like "High Roller," the brazen use of cliches ("On The Radio" is a redundant "Hey Mr. Deejay" number saved by performance and gimmickry). Still, for a group with obvious talent, audio-visual personality and craftiness, Cheap Trick is capable of simplistic rants like "Stiff Competition," labored, painful parody (one hopes) like "Auf Wiedersehen," and mechanical riffs like "Takin' Me Back." Sometimes it just sounds like creative laziness, as if they took a hook, some zippy synthesizer, a few "oooh"s and a sharp guitar line, and never did the tailoring to sew it all together. Sometimes the ideas and playing are just banal, and the jokes fall flat. Heaven Tonight may not be Cheap Trick's major leap, but at least half should win Daniel's admiration and make Gloria smile. And if you'd ever seen Gloria's smile, you'd know that any rock 'n' roll that brings one to her face is music that has served its purpose on earth.
