REO Speedwagon – Good Trouble
Rock Candy Records
www.rockcandyrecords.com

Rating: D

Good Trouble was not what was in store for REO Speedwagon when this album was released.  Perhaps Big Trouble would have been a more appropriate name.  For starters, the band was entering the studio to follow up their massively successful album Hi Infidelity. 

Any album would have a hard time measuring up, but with Good Trouble the band was pressured into the studio to repeat the work that took them over a decade to come up with!

The result is one of the weaker albums in REO’s catalog.  The songs don’t come across with the right amount of passion and band ownership.  With good reason, as history taught us, the songs were not completed and the album was rushed.  The result was a subpar effort that if not for 1984’s Wheels are Turnin’ might have been the end of REO Speedwagon’s period of major success. 

“Keep the Fire Burnin’” ended up a small hit and helped the album sell decently, yet when compared to their other albums this one simply sounds uncomfortable. 

That said, it is a historic album for REO and Rock Candy did proper justice to the release as they fully remastered the album with 24 BIT digital technology and included 16 page full color booklet, 3,500 word essay complete with a new interview with Kevin Cronin.

Track Listing:
Keep the Fire Burnin’ | Sweet Time | Girl with the Heart of Gold | Every Now and Then | I’ll Follow You | The Key | Back in My Heart Again | Let’s Be-Bop | Stillness of the Night | Good Trouble

By Jeb Wright