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 would go practically unnoticed. The critics would praise it left and right, still the deserved success would pass it by. Such situation happened many times and will be happening, and Cheap Trick was not an exception to this. Despite its apparent strengths the release of the self-titled debut changed nothing for the band and the Rockford guys again needed to try something else.
The second album titled
In Color quickly followed the first one and was released in August 1977. Cheap Trick needed only 8 months to do it. While listening you may get a feeling the record was supposed to be a kind of correction of errors that in the band’s opinion prevented from the proper (and undoubtedly well-deserved) success. At least it can serve as a sufficient enough explanation to the changes we see on
In Color.
It’s better to start with the change of producers as it entails everything else. This time the place of Jack Douglas (
Aerosmith,
Alice Cooper) is taken by another, not less distinguished laborer of the sound front Tom Werman (
Blue Oyster Cult,
Motley Crue,
Dokken). It is doubtful this swapping had to do anything with the minimalistic approach chosen by Mr. Douglas. More likely, the goal was to highlight other musical accents and this reshuffle gave the desired effect. Whereas
Cheap Trick brimmed with nervous energy promptly emphasized by the wall of sound,
In Color clearly attempted something else. Namely to bring out to the front pop melodies inherent to Rick Nielsen’s songwriting, which at times cleverly hide beneath the hard rock exterior, in an effort to make this 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 (the statement is somewhat confirmed with the track demo made during the recording of the first album). However, in the hands of Mr. Werman the song transformed into a perfect pop number. The sunny-lit melody with its piano overflows create the required mood, and lively and catchy vocal intonations of Robin Zander complete this pop confection with necessary filling.
The very same
I Want You to Want Me illustrates wonderfully changes in the lyrical content that happened on the album. Having discarded some of the more risqué topics present on the debut,
In Color smooths any outstanding sharp edges and shifts the focus on the themes of relationships and fun times (except for
Downed, where lyrics are supposedly represent text of a suicide note). Nevertheless – and it is definitely something specific to the band’s sound – the lyrics are open for interpretation and filled with subtle and 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 and continue the elements present on the debut, and at the same time manage to uphold the high standards and provide with wider stylistic diversity (like a rock ‘n’ roll number
Clock Strikes Ten or tough
Hello There and
You’re All Talk). After some time after release the band began to express its dissatisfaction with the studio gloss applied to the tracks, saying 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 remain unreleased to this day. Even if the sound seems overproduced, in no way it 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, not having lost a shred of its appeal. Together with
Cheap Trick the album clearly demonstrates two sides that are typical for this original band.
