Ol' Todd Rundgren is someone who doesn't really need any introduction. He's been recording music since the late 60's and probably is involved (somewhere) in an album you know and love. He did God's work with XTC in the 80's and almost all of his solo albums and band efforts are fantastic as well.

Unlike a lot of musicians from his generation, Todd is pretty forward-thinking in regards to technology and the applications of it in today's recording processes. To that end, White Knight is something of a snapshot / retrospective of his whole career with an added edge of experimentation courtesy of some of the big players who show up on this album (Trent Reznor perhaps being the most recognizable name).

So he basically recorded and collaborated this whole thing with just his laptop and some proprietary software, and the end result is boundlessly creative even if it lacks that "in-studio" sound that some tell you is necessary to produce a truly "human" sounding album. In this case though, the goal was to experiment and bring in as many outside ideas as he could into a completely digital, cloud-based type of workflow.

You get a little bit of everything here. Daryl Hall comes in with his trademark blue-eyed soul prowess on 'Chance For Us', 'Naked & Afraid' is straight up EDM, 'This Is Not A Drill' has Joe Satriani jamming over some early 90's post-punk sounding thing and even Steely Dan's Donald Fagen shows up to make fun of Donald Trump on the snarky Hammond organ led 'Tin Foil Hat'.

While not my favorite Rundgren album overall (that honor goes to 1989's Nearly Human), this was one of the dark horses of 2017 and has the benefit of being both a fun album to go through while throwing in a lot of variety where you'd least expect it from someone approaching 70.