Some things never change --- Supertramp --- 1997 (EMI)
Despite the title, for fifteen years it had and has been quite obvious that things
have changed, and drastically within the Supertramp fold, leading to a watering-down of their music and a serious waning of their popularity. When guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and co-founder of the band Roger Hodgson left in 1982 after the superlative "Famous last words", the band struggled to cope without his input, his presence, his inspiration. Of course, maybe internally they didn't, but looking at their output from that to this, it's clear that many of the sounds, melodies, ideas and themes that characterised their previous albums --- including such commercially successful ones as "Breakfast in America" and "Even in the quietest moments" --- departed with Hodgson. Although Rick Davies had always co-written and sung with Roger, it was the latter who was known as the voice of Supertramp, since most if not all of the singles have his voice and he always tended to sing on the more "up" songs, while Davies tended to take the more mature, downbeat, serious ones. This of course led to Hodgson being identified with such hits as "Breakfast in America", "The logical song", "It's raining again" and "Dreamer"; he presented the "happy", some might say more poppy side of Supertramp, and people knew the band by his voice.
But on the evidence of their last few albums Supertramp have never managed to recapture that special something that Hodgson brought to the table. "Famous last words" was a
tour-de-force, a fitting swansong for the man who had guided Supertramp through twelve years and seven albums, but when the last echoes of "Don't leave me now" had faded away into the distance, there was a numbing sense of finality, and to be honest, had Supertramp disbanded then I would not have been that surprised. Perhaps, in the light of what came next, they should have done so. But no doubt Rick Davies and John Helliwell, who had been there from the early years, believed the band could survive his departure, and unlike Queen without Freddie or Lizzy without Phil, they forged ahead and tried to continue without him.
Without him though their music leaned away from the happy pop sensibilities of their hit albums and returned in the main to the progressive rock, blues/jazz themes of their first two albums, with a lot of the material coming across both as dour and dated. Though they scored a minor hit with "Cannonball" from the first album post-Hodgson, "Brother where you bound", the album did not do well and though it was praised by critics I found it meandering and boring. With only six tracks on it I believe it represented poor value for money too, even if the title track was over sixteen minutes long. The followup, "Free as a bird", was marginally better, but I could still only pick out one or two --- literally --- good tracks off it.
I believe they returned to a measure of their previous glory though with this, their, to date, penultimate album. There's a mixture of the long prog rock wandering songs that tend to crop up on the self-titled debut and some reasonably good rock, a bit of pop and it's almost something for everyone. Of the later (post-Hodgson) albums I'd say it's far and away the best, even if sadly it was followed by one of their worst ever. The album cover is very clever, a typical Supertramp motif that echoes the sleeves of "Breakfast in America" and "Famous last words", as well as "Crime of the century" but is more closely linked to the cover for 1974's "Crisis? What crisis?", with the advent of afternoon tea doggedly persisting despite the fact that the characters appear to be living on the moon. Some things, indeed, never change.
The music had changed though, and even with some quite impressive tracks this is still a long way removed from the heyday of Supertramp; there would be no hit singles from this album --- "Cannonball" has to date been their last incursion on the pop charts --- but it does at least improve on the track numbers, with this album containing twelve in all, compared to the previous nine on "Free as a bird" and the laughable six on "Brother where you bound". It also features the very first solo lead vocals from Mark Hart, who had joined the band in 1986 and had first tried out his singing on one track on the prior album, though in that case he had shared vocals with Davies. It probably isn't the best of signs that the album opens with a nine-minute epic, rather slow and plodding and with a downbeat message, but throughout the album it does brighten up and the style takes a turn back towards the more "happy" Supertramp sound of the seventies and eighties.
The album opens with "It's a hard road", soft digital piano and organ, bass guitar thrumming away and it's almost like a sort of a tuneup, the bass mostly leading the line as the piano chimes away in the background, soft synth laying down a backdrop until the drums cut in and the familiar sax work of John Anthony Helliwell sweeps up Rick Davies' voice in a funky, jazzy song that details the dreams of someone waiting to make it ---
"Right now I'm just trying to survive/ Livin' rough, hangin' tough, shapin' up" --- his faith unshakeable that he will break into the big time. Over the last few years Davies has introduced more and more brass into the Supertramp sound, pulling them towards a more jazz area than in the Hodgson era, and it does work but reduces the commercial appeal of the band, making their current music less accessible to those who don't know them.
Davies has of course always shared vocal duties with his departed partner, and we know him from many Supertramp songs that didn't make it as hits, such as "Bloody well right", "Rudy" and even "Goodbye stranger", so it's no wrench to hear him sing here --- he has after all been bossing the vocals for fifteen years now --- and his voice certainly suits the dour almost blind optimism of this song. To be fair, for a song over nine minutes this does not seem stretched or overlong. There's a return of sorts to a pop sound with "You win I lose", those familiar uptempo Supertramp piano lines leading the way, and it's more boppy and even poppy: you could hear Roger singing this. Some great organ too from Mark Hart, and a wonderful little sax solo from Helliwell that evokes the golden years of the band. There's actually a lot of their massive hit "Breakfast in America" in this, then "Get your act together" is a more typical Davies composition, with a sort of half-bitter worldweariness about it, juxtaposed against a swinging uptempo melody with some fine harmonica. Sort of reminds me of "Put on your old brown shoes" from "Famous last words". More trumpets and trombones add to the upbeat tone of the song despite the somewhat sardonic lyric, which could almost be in response to the unswerving, almost naive faith expressed in the opener.
Nice organ and piano on "Live to love you", essentially the first ballad on the album, with what sounds like the ghost of Roger Hodgson in the backing vocals --- guess that must be Hart --- and another fine sax solo from John Helliwell, while the title track goes almost dance/funk with hard cracking drums and jazzy guitar, warbling organ and a tight bassline. Hints that our "new friends" may not be as reliable as they seem in lines like
"In some countries far from here/ You know, the ones we used to fear/ Are they just waiting to return to/ Their old evil ways?" and some very acrobatic guitar from Mark Hart mark this out as different to the usual thing we've come to expect from Supertramp. An uptempo song with a bleak message and a warning, and a piano solo from Davies the like of which we really haven't heard since the seminal closer for "Breakfast in America", "Child of vision". Joined by Helliwell's horn then it makes a fine instrumental end to the song, with the sounds of sirens threaded through the tune, as if the point hadn't already been made.
The standout of the album by a long way comes with "Listen to me please", with a boppy, uptempo song that just fizzes with energy and a great fast piano opening, with vocals for the first time on the album shared by Davies and Mark Hart, though the former not surprisingly dominates. It seems to be a cautionary tale about perhaps not putting all your trust in record label executives?
"We'll make it easy for you/ Plan evertyhing you do/ Won't have to work very hard/ You'll make it big from the start/ Don't have to take it from me/ Here's a list you can see/ For every one of those names/ I brought them fortune and fame." Or maybe it's just a warning that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. It's when the chorus gets going though that the song really takes off, and in the fadeout it speeds up and gets quite frenetic. "Sooner or later" then goes back into the slow funk groove of the title track, again driven mostly on piano and organ. It's the first song to feature Mark Hart on solo vocals, and he does really well. He's no Roger Hodgson, but his more falsetto voice contrasts nicely against Davies' baritone, and either way it's nice to hear a different singer. The song itself is no great shakes, though it does feature some nice interplay between Helliwell and Davies.
Blues and honky-tonk merge in "Help me down that road", great piano work from Rick Davies and a soulful vocal performance, then there's almost a sense of gospel to "And the light", one of the other standouts with lush organ and some great guitar, the first really slow song on the album, and in effect the first proper ballad. Brilliant smoky sax solo in it, then "C'est what?" is a return to uptempo poppy music and with a fine piano intro is almost a fast "Bloody well right", though some punching brass adds real teeth to it, as well as Hart's screaming guitar. It's the second-longest track, at over eight minutes, with some jazzy backing vocals, very danceable I would think, and it gives the brass section a real chance to shine. Very happy, very bouncy and again for such a long track doesn't drag or seem overextended. The album then closes on another ballad, the rather beautiful and quite uplifting "Where there's a will".
Opening on solo piano from Davies, the song mixes blues and gospel, with some solid drumming from longtime skinsman Bob Siebenberg, and Davies almost preacher-like on the vocals with some of the most basic truisms of humanity:
"I don't know nothin' about this world/ And all its pains/ I can't tell you why we can't/ All just get along/ But after all is said and done/ Gotta keep on keepin' on!" Couldn't have said it better myself Rick! Great chorus on the backing vocals and a fine powerful ending that brings to a close a Supertramp album that stands head and shoulders above the work post-Hodgson, and which they completely failed to repeat on their next, and so far last, outing.
TRACKLISTING
1. It's a hard world
2. You win, I lose
3. Get your act together
4. Live to love you
5. Some things never change
6. Listen to me please
7. Sooner or later
8. Help me down that road
9. And the light
10. C'est what?
11. Where there's a will
There is, weirdly, a "hidden track" which is in fact the other one on which Mark Hart takes lead vocals, but as it's uncertain where it comes in the album --- my version shows it at the beginning, as "track 0" while Wiki lists it as track 10 --- I'm not going to go into it. I can't remember if it's on my original CD or not, but I don't remember it to be honest.
For a brief moment then in the late nineties Supertramp managed to recapture, at least partially, the magic and the excitement that characterised such albums as "Crime of the century", "Breakfast in America" and "Crisis? What crisis?" but the true spirit of the band left along with Roger Hodgson. In many ways, "Some things never change" can be seen as quite an optimistic album, from the blind faith of the opener to the determined insistence of the closer, and there are some really upbeat messages on it. There are of course darker elements, with the title track and yes even the opener can be viewed from a position of negativity and scorn, but this is a well put together album and recalls, probably for the last time in their career, the Supertramp I used to know and love.
Note: Supertramp videos are almost non-existent on the net. Where you can find them they're invariably "not available in your country", so rather than search YouTube fruitlessly I've provided a link here to the full album on Grooveshark. It's worth listening to.
Grooveshark - Free Music Streaming, Online Music