The first time through this, I didn’t like it as much as Toys in the Attic. Aside from the opening track, there are fewer hits and the songs sounded weaker on the whole.
But this is a dirty, perhaps deliberately poorly sounding record. (Listen to the piano on the last track – that piano sounds terrible). At a time when most rock bands were still trying to sound as perfect as possible in studio, and over-rehearsing the shit out of everything, here is a band that sounds messy, unpolished and raw, despite the commercial success of the last record. It’s as if they had taken at least some of the spirit of punk to heart. (I doubt that’s what really happened. I heard it was the drugs that caused this record to sound like shit.)
It’s really appealing and the songs grow on you perhaps because of the grimy sound. I still don’t think it’s as strong a set of songs as the previous record, but it’s a cool record made in defiance of trends at the time.
8/10