Review Summary: This album is sweet. And in color.
Popularity is a tricky thing. You can record and release an excellent, original album, but by some bad chance, it will go practically unnoticed. Critics will praise it left and right, yet the deserved success will pass it by. Such situations have happened many times and will continue to happen, and Cheap Trick was no exception. Despite its apparent strengths, the release of the self-titled debut changed nothing for the band, and the Rockford guys needed to try something else once again.
The second album, titled
In Color, quickly followed the first one and was released in August 1977. Cheap Trick needed only 8 months to make it. While listening, you may get the feeling the record was supposed to be a kind of correction of errors that, in the band’s opinion, prevented proper (and undoubtedly well-deserved) success. At least, this can serve as a sufficient explanation for the changes we see on
In Color.
It’s best to start with the change of producers, as it entails everything else. This time, the place of Jack Douglas (
Aerosmith,
Alice Cooper) was taken by another, equally distinguished master of the mixing board, Tom Werman (
Blue Oyster Cult,
Motley Crue,
Dokken). It is doubtful this swapping had anything to do with the minimalistic approach chosen by Mr. Douglas. More likely, the goal was to highlight other musical accents, and this reshuffle achieved the desired effect. Whereas
Cheap Trick brimmed with nervous energy promptly emphasized by a wall of sound,
In Color clearly attempted something else: namely, to bring out to the front the pop melodies inherent in Rick Nielsen’s songwriting, which at times cleverly hid beneath a hard rock exterior, in an effort to make the collection more accessible.
Look no further than
I Want You to Want Me, one of their better-known songs. Even though Cheap Trick performed the track before they recorded the debut, it would have sounded a lot less efficient within the context and style of the previous LP (as confirmed by the demo recorded during the sessions for the first album). However, in the hands of Mr. Werman, the song transformed into a perfect pop number. The sun-lit melody with its piano flourishes creates the required mood, and the lively, catchy vocal intonations of Robin Zander complete this pop confection with the necessary filling.
I Want You to Want Me wonderfully illustrates the changes in lyrical content that happened on the album. Having discarded some of the more risqué topics present on the debut,
In Color smooths over any sharp edges and shifts the focus to themes of relationships and fun times (except for
Downed, whose lyrics represent the text of a suicide note). Nevertheless – and this is definitely something specific to the band’s sound – the lyrics are open to interpretation and filled with subtle, slightly twisted humor of Rick Nielsen: “
I want you to want me / I need you to need me / I’m begging you to beg me”.
But don’t think that the rest of the songs come nowhere close to the one mentioned above. On the contrary, they are still of the highest grade, continuing the elements present on the debut while managing to uphold high standards and offer greater stylistic diversity (like the rock ‘n’ roll number
Clock Strikes Ten or the tough
Hello There and
You’re All Talk). Sometime after its release, the band began to express dissatisfaction with the studio gloss applied to the tracks, claiming it hid the originally intended sound. That displeasure was so great that in the 1990s they re-recorded the album with producer Steve Albini – which remains unreleased to this day. Even if the sound seems overproduced, it in no way obscures one of the main weapons at the band’s disposal: its drive and melodism.
Instead, we can safely state that
In Color is an indisputable and definitive success, and it still sounds gloriously today, having lost not a shred of its appeal. Together with
Cheap Trick, the album clearly demonstrates the two sides typical of this original band.
