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(Hidden
Track) - Anytime - Hard To Tell - Carnival Game
Shelter - You Let A Lotta People Down - Baby No More
Yeah Yeah - Say Goodbye - Wrong All Along
Eight Miles Low - It All Comes Back To You
Hold down
the pause button and reverse your disc to minus 35 seconds on the timer
. You'll hear a hidden album montage made up of demos & studio snippets
merging into a false drum start that kicks the lustful 'Anytime'
into gear sung with incredible electricity by Trick's ace vocalist Robin
Zander.
'Hard To Tell' follows resplendent
in all its lofty Who's Next and Beatles '66 overtones. Crashing Townshend
power cords abound and you can almost picture Rick Nielsen turning into
a human windmill in the process!
'Carnival Game' is pure pop starting with a silly piano bit
coupled with Beatlistic "OH, OH, OH's". A song about the game
of love with a great bubbly guitar solo that has you reaching for the
tennis racquet!
One of the many gems on this album appears next. 'Shelter',
a fragile Lennon styled acoustic ballad (cello accompaniment) with 'heart
on the sleeve' lyrics that are made even more moving when you realize
that it was written at a time when Nielsen lost both his parents in a
space of a few months.
Chugging Who
guitars introduce 'You Let a Lotta People Down'.
The title says it all folks and seems to sum up what this band has been
through. Lyrically it reminds me a lot of Queen's 'Death On Two Legs'
(A Night At The Opera) which was a sarcastic dig at management and the
record industry.
The song literally slides across the floor with sneering Zander
vocals "You rode upon a wicked fence, could've fallen either way, but
you chose another loser in your sick, sick game… You let a lotta people
down…" The song then literally disintegrates into a primitive Zeppelinesque
coda with Zander screaming in anguish!
'Baby
No More' breathlessly bounds along at a fast and furious pace,
sort of a mix between The Sex Pistols, The Dave Clark 5 and The Ramones
with simmering electric guitars which finally percolate their way to the
surface in a damn fine solo… Phew!
Trick
with their trademark 'dalek' backing vocals then begin the bluesy, despairing
'Yeah Yeah' with some nimble bass
work from Petersson and follow it by dusting off their Beatle jackets
singing the first single to be lifted off this album 'Say
Goodbye'.
What's in a name? Well this next ambiguous tune 'Wrong
All Along' may well be lovingly (!) dedicated to their former
manager and is reminiscent of earlier 'Clock
Strikes Ten' days. It's the sort
of result you'd expect if you crossed the Stones with Eddie Cochran …
"Heaven's fallin', I keep callin', you keep stallin', God I'll be lucky
to get out alive!"
A sitar ushers
in the lustful (there's that word again!) frustration that is 'Eight
Miles Low' with some terrific
Keith Moon type drum fills courtesy of Bun E. and a cracking riff to boot.
Meaty, beaty, big and bouncy!
As the
previous number fades out we are brought gently back down to earth with
the lilting acoustic ballad 'It All Comes Back
To You' complete with Zander telephone vocals. This fantastic
album is conclusive proof that the four Trickster's have rediscovered
that ol' magic touch… "It all comes back to you, with everything you do…"
The Tricksters
also found time to record a 7" single with legendary producer and self
proclaimed Trick fan Steve Albini for the ultra cool Seattle based label,
Sub Pop. Albini's own band 'Big Black' had actually covered one of Trick's
classic's 'He's A Whore' a few years earlier.
The self penned 'A' side 'Baby Talk'
with it's opening 'When Alice Comes Back To The Farm' inspired
riff heralds a song laden with Move & Stones ferocity whilst the flipside
features a grungy, bluesy version of Roy's heavy metal monster 'Brontosaurus'.
Compared to the Ian Taylor produced CT'97 album, Albini's 'live'
production style (Nirvana, Bush, PJ Harvey, Pixies etc.) brings an overall
heavier, rougher finish to these Trick tunes. Methinks that one would
find the 'Looking On' and 'Wizzard Brew' LP's in his collection, and probably
the 'Something Else EP'. In fact it was Albini that suggested that the
guys do 'Brontosaurus' when they were looking for a 'B' side!
The combination works well resulting in an altogether live cavernous
sound although I would have liked to have heard Zander's leering Jaggeresque
vocals on the 'A' side more up front in the mix as well as Rick's manic
slide in 'Brontosaurus'. Minor quibbles aside, they really have got that
live Move sound pinned down with Bun E. and Tom Petersson providing a
pumping rhythm that was once so vital to the Move persona… They have proved
beyond a doubt that they really can do the Brontosaurus!
The mouth watered from afar in 1998 as news filtered through from
the UK that our Roy had appeared on stage with Rick, Robin, Tom and Bun
E. during Cheap Trick's UK tour… |
