Cheap Trick

These guys play rock & roll like Vince Lombardi coached football: heavy emphasis on basics
with a strain of demented violence to keep the opposition intimidated. The closest musical
analogy is the Who, who have always sounded like the inmates of Bedlam on their best
stuff. Cheap Trick not only sounds like their attendant forgot to lock their cages, they look
like it, too. Half the fun of the album is staring at the pictures on the back and w... More >

I like their looks--two pretty-boys balanced off by two ugly-guys--and have no objection to their sound, which recalls the Aerosmith of Rocks. Nor am I shocked that they're not as powerful as the Aerosmith of Rocks, Jack Douglas or no Jack Douglas. But given their harmony singing you think they'd try and be more melodic. Sign of smarts: the way the phrase "any time at all" hooks "He's a Whore."