Cheap Trick – We’re All Alright!
Big Machine Records
http://www.cheaptrick.com/

Rating: B

The reviews for We’re All Alright! that I have read have all been very positive.  Oddly enough most just talk about the first two or three songs only.  Have we become such an ‘in a rush’ and ‘throwaway’ society that our music reviewers do not even take the time to listen to an album all the way through?  If that did happen—and I wonder if it does more often than not—then it is their loss.  Cheap Trick’s We’re All Alright! is as good as ‘they’ say it is…but the deeper one goes into the track listing the more they discover just how good it is!

Look…the band did mix up the Who and The Kinks for the riff to the opener “You Got It Going On.”  Sure, that’s cool and the song rocks.  “Long Time Coming” is bad-ass and just a classic Cheap Trick song…it deserves praise…we get it.  “Radio Lover” has a Bowie-ness to it.  But…those are not nearly the best this disc has to offer…not by a long shot! 

This release, to my ears, really begins with track five “Lolita.”  This is the Trick I long for.  This is the Trick that can make one smile just by watching four dudes play three chords.  “Brand New Name On An Old Tattoo” is the best song of the bunch.  Robin Zander sings his 64-year-old ass off as the band pounds this punk rocker into dust.  “Floating Down” is a mellow song that Zander owns! “She’s Alright” is an old school tune that begs to be listened to over and over again.  This song just makes one want to sit on the porch, sip lemonade with your best girl and realize how gawd-damn good life is.

The 9^th song, “Listen To Me” has lots of that frantic geetar low bass string run stuff that makes Trick sound best cranked up.  Nothing fancy…this one is just attitude, balls and old men proving their music is better than today’s kids music…complete with plenty of middle finger lyrics! Oh…and it has hands down the best guitar solo of the bunch! The regular version of the CD ends with the song “The Rest of My Life.”  Here we find that Cheap Trick meets the Beatles meets the Who sound only this band can pull off.  Damn…18 studio albums in and these fuckers still got it.  I’m jealous!

Producer Julian Raymond knew what made Rick Nielsen, Robin Zander, Tom Petersson and Daxx Nielsen tick.  He put them in a studio and hit record!  Is this another Dream Police or Heaven Tonight?  No, it is not.  But it is a band that is still cranking it up and doing what they do best.  They still dig it or they sure as hell would not be still doing it. The attitude on this sucker gets an A+!

At the end of the day, Cheap Trick is certainly all alright.  No need to get any Kiss records out anymore, either.

Fuck Kiss…we got Cheap Trick!

Track Listing
You Got It Going On
Long Time Coming
Nowhere
Radio Lover
Lolita
Brand New Name On An Old Tattoo
Floating Down
She's Alright
Listen To Me
The Rest Of My Life

By Jeb “Stop this Game” Wright