After falling on their face with their follow up to their smash debut, Fieger, Averre and the band picked themselves off the self-congratulatory floor, tossed Mike Chapman out for Jack Douglas and pumped out Round Trip, their 3rd album and the last before they would break up for a while.
Too bad, really. Everything that was wrong with …But The Little Girls Understand is right with Round Trip. Rather than harkening back and aping every influencer the band ever heard (Beatles, Stones, Rockabilly, Orbison, Specter, etc) the group fully embraces their Power Pop status and stand on the shoulders of the greats. The Raspberries, Big Star, Bay City Rollers and others have NOTHING on The Knack. Ironically, and sadly, Power Pop never really had a heyday. It was never truly embraced by anyone save the musicians who loved it. Weirdly, it has never really gone away, there are a gazillion Power Pop bands carrying on to this day. And they all owe a debt of gratitude to The Knack for breaking through so hard with the sound and paving…some way for them.
Much has been written about this record, about how it was unfairly maligned and very underrated and all of that is true. I’m not going to rehash it. The band is at it’s muscly best on tracks like “Radiating Love” and “Soul Kissin'”, thanks in no small part to the genius of Douglas who brings a lot of Cheap Trick and bit of Aerosmith to the proceedings. He really gives the band it’s heft and credibility. I swear “Africa” owes as much to Steve Miller Band as it does to anything else. But, rather than rip the sound off, it just sounds borrowed and fresh. And “She Likes the Beat” has as much in common with late 70s Joe Jackson as it does Nick Gilder, and I could hear it playing well on early 80s radio. That it didn’t is a shame. And the hits just keep coming.
“Just Wait and See” is super Power Pop.
“We Are Waiting” is Magical Mystery Tour redux, more Monkees than Beatles but I mean that in a very good way.
End Side One
So, what happens on the flip side?
The quintessential Fieger/Knack track, “Boys Go Crazy”, that’s what. A revved up cousin to “Good Girls Don’t” (in theme and spirit, at least). Followed by the story song, “Lil Cal’s Big Mistake”, as self assured urban rocker if I’ve ever heard one which blends into the haunting “Sweet Dreams”, an experimental prog rocker that is surely unexpected.
But, “Another Lousy Day in Paradise” is the perfect Knack song if I ever heard one. One that blends Big Star, The Beatles, The Kinks, The Cars and wraps them all up in one taut rocker. And one of the best tracks on the album, hell, in the band’s entire catalog is the only Berton Averre solo-penned “Pay the Devil (Ooo, Baby, Ooo)”, a giant, anthemic psychedelic piece of Lennon-esque pop.
If that’s not enough, the album ends on the biggest, highest note of a track. A snarky, angry, punky, messy piece of social commentary called, “Art War”. Considering that The Knack were basically a piece of Pop Art themselves, it’s a perfect biting of the hand that feeds.
Round Trip is a treat. An unearthed, should have been, classic. Huh. I guess I did have something to say, after all.
Grade: A
ASide: Radiating Love, Boys Go Crazy, Another Lousy Day in Paradise, Pay the Devil (Ooo, Baby, Ooo)
BlindSide: Soul Kissin’, Africa, She Likes the Beat, Just Wait and See, Lil Cal’s Big Mistake, Art War
