Todd Rundgren and the Liars tour / New album

Thanks for the update on Todd's new album. I will give it a shot. In my opinion, his best work was his early to late 70's solo work including:

Something/Anything?: 1972 wideley regarded as his masterpiece

Hermit of Mink Hollow: 1978 Includes can we still be friends?

A Wizard, A True Star. 1973???

Hey Dweller, based on your fave records of his I'd recommend checking "Liars" out. Healer and Acapella are also two of my faves (along with The Ballad of, Something/Anything, a Wizard a True Star, The first Nazz album, etc) and I like Swing to the Right too. Like you, I got to the point over the last ten years where I reluctantly wrote him off as washed up, but Liars proved me wrong and I'm very happy about that. It's definitely up there with some of his best. The instrumentation does have something in common with his 90s work (mostly No World Order) on certain songs, but the songs are superior to anything since Nearly Human or earlier. The songs and lyrics are very strong and the album ties together, conceptually, in a way that his haven't since the 80s.

I do think he could use a co-producer to offset his more extreme tendencies at times, but the album is strong enough to make me overlook those moments. And yes...like many of his past albums, the cover is silly and not at all representative of the content (the Japanese import has a more suitable cover). I believe Mojo magazine gave it 5 stars and I might agree. It's his best in decades and my favorite album of the year (so far anyway).

Phil

Phil: Sounds like you know your T.R. I'll have to check this out. As a footnote, I saw Todd at the Park West theater (Chicago) on New Year's Eve around 1990 (give-or-take). I bought tickets to both sets to get my fill of this great musician. He came out first set and played some less-than-hot licks. Nobody responded. He said something like "Hey! Why aren't you getting into it?" -like we were obligated to swoon over anything that came out of his amp!
Someone in the audience (i.e. me) said "Get down!".
He eventually did but I couldn't tell if he was testing us or was just on a huge ego trip.
This guy can really play hot guitar when he's in the mood.

after my 20 or so concerts, all I can say is he is god

I'm about 50/50 on the album. some of it is incredibly good and some less so. i saw the first 2 shows of the tour and it showed that even great bands are composed of humans. After only a weeks worth of practice they proceeded to go out and cut more hogs than any bar band i've ever played with. I think a lot of the problem was stage set up since the players couldn't see each other for change cues. Prarie Prince (tubes fame) even told todd that he couldn't see Casim after Todd chased him back to his riser. I've seen similar melt downs on the Obsession tour. At least the guy takes chances...better than the lip sink crap all the kiddies go see these days. All in all it was a good show and is probably killer now that the bugs are worked out.