Tremble…Sigh…Wonder…

by James Kenney

Most bands go nowhere. Some bands get famous. Others become legendary in smaller, more intriguing ways. Cheap Trick falls into that third camp. Their iffy chart history only tells part of the story. What really matters is how deeply people, once stuck, stick with them. They’re the rare band that figured out how to weld hard rock to pure pop melody and make genuine “power pop.” Which isn’t the commercial enterprise it sounds like, anyone from Marshall Crenshaw to the Plimsouls to the Shoes to Elvis Costello could’ve told you that.

Cheap Trick was always built on contradiction. Rick Nielsen wrote songs that were weird, bratty, sometimes even kind of dumb, and clearly meant to be. Robin Zander sang them like his life depended on it. His voice can lean McCartney one second and Lennon the next, and it never sounds like an impression or parody. It just works. Even the band’s look played into the tension: two conventionally handsome rock guys offset by two guys who looked, well, goofy. Cheap Trick sometimes looked like a joke (that they were clearly in on). The music was no joke. Well, for the most part. Contradictions, you know?

But, my goodness, the hooks. Whether fast and feral (“He’s a Whore,” “Surrender”) or aching and slow (“Voices,” “If You Want My Love”), Cheap Trick could hit upon melodies and land choruses while still giving you the hard rock buzz. Yes, most albums, particularly after 1980, had a couple of meh tracks. Yes, Nielsen’s lyrics could be thin, goofy, or emotionally opaque. But when the band connected, the sheer melodic force spoke to rock and roll perfection anyway.

I came to them in the mid-’80s via the indelible “Tonight It’s You,” which in retrospect marks the beginning of the end of Cheap Trick: Phase One. Bassist Tom Petersson left because of the wife’s complaints, that sort of thing. The albums had stopped charting. Production grew nervous and way overcooked. Still, even their “worst” record of that era—The Doctor—has a couple of moments of real grace (“Take Me to the Top,” “It’s Only Love”) that kept me happy through high school even when no one else I knew was listening.

Then came the weirdest twist of all. Epic Records figured out how to sell Cheap Trick again, and they did it with what is, frankly, their crappiest album: Lap of Luxury. Leading with the not-written-by-them schmaltzy, worldwide smash “The Flame,” the label forced the band (with Petersson back, minus a wife) to squeeze themselves into the late-’80s shape dictated by Mötley Crüe, Poison, Warrant, Richard Marx, and the rest. And while now I’ve made my peace — that hit allowed Cheap Trick to be more than “a 70s band”, and it certainly is a showcase or Zander’s powerful voice — and while it worked commercially—artistically, the album sucked, with the one or two recognizable Trick tunes (“Never Had a Lot to Lose” comes to mind) overwhelmed by the Diane Warren copyrights. The follow-up album, Busted, is almost as bad but not quite; with some chart success under their belt, the band seemed to wrestled back a little control. Tracks like “Had to Make You Mine” and “Rock and Roll Tonight” sound like actual Cheap Trick again, even if the leadoff ballad “Can’t Stop Falling Into Love” somehow manages to be worse than “The Flame” while also being, paradoxically and promisingly, more of a Cheap Trick song. They have their own clumsy, recognizable way of being bad, and “CSFIL” qualifies. Huzzah! And, alas, another Diane Warren copyright shows up.

When that album stiffed, Epic dropped them for good. Thank God.

With Woke Up With a Monster, produced by Ted Templeman in the early 90s, the band entered Phase Two, the version of Cheap Trick we’ve been living with ever since. This era has never been revelatory, doesn’t move units, but it’s rock and roll as Cheap Trick did it from the beginning. The eccentric wordplay of “Surrender,” “Dream Police,” “I Want Be Man” or “Downed” is largely gone, replaced by a lot more competent but unsurprising “love you / me too” lyricism than I’d prefer. But there’s something quietly admirable about a band that accepts who they are and just… keeps going. A new Cheap Trick album every few years. Ten or so solid songs. No delusions of reinvention or keeping up with fashion. But, also, no burnout. They make records because they like making them and know how. It’s like they’re keeping the promise to their loyal fans. We’re in it together. And seeing them live in the St. George Theater on Staten Island right before they were elected into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was mildly revelatory. They were terrific. No apologies for their live shows well into the 21st century. We got our money’s worth.

Yes, Heaven Tonight or In Color will always be the high-water marks. But when I don’t feel like playing Heaven Tonight, it’s genuinely nice to have ten or so decent new Trick tracks waiting in the wings. It’s also wild that this “late” period has now stretched on for over thirty years, with, alas, Bun E. Carlos replaced by Rick Nielsen’s kid.

Which brings us to the new album, All Washed Up.

The title alone feels like a Cheap Trick joke—self-deprecating, stubborn, a little goofy. The record opens well and then does what Cheap Trick has always done best: it kicks in. Zander still sounds like Zander. The band still sounds like it enjoys recording not because it has to, but because it wants to.

The songs land somewhere between very good and perfectly adequate, which, at this point, is fine. There are hard rockers. There are Beatlesque ballads. It’s all there. Who’s complaining?

No, All Washed Up isn’t going to change anyone’s mind about Cheap Trick. It’s not trying to, really, though no doubt they’ll be happy if someone stumbles upon it and says “Hey, who’s this?” It’s a record by a band that knows exactly who they are, and what they do well. The melodies are there. The crunch is there. The choruses still land. Power pop!

Cheap Trick were never quite perfect but they allowed us who wouldn’t give ourselves over to nonsense like the Crue and Bon Jovi to have our own hard rock band fronted by long-haired pretty boys who were actually smart and talented and who enjoyed hanging out with goofs we could identify with like Nielsen and Carlos. They had these other bands’ power, but they also had, you know, the pop. Unlike those guys, Cheap Trick is sublime. And, even now, even all washed up, they still sound like Cheap Trick.