Reviewed By: Nicholas R. Andreas
Artist: Supertramp
Album: Crime of the Century
Genre: Classic Rock
Year of Release: 1974
On Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Crime-Century-Supertramp/dp/B000068FY0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1260751156&sr=8-1 Not everyone will agree that Supertramp was, in any typical way, a classic prog band, however I’d say that Crime of the Century was one of the finest progressive releases of the entire 1970’s. While others tend to focus on releases like Red, or Selling England by the Pound, I tend to think that Supertramp produced a record superior to either of those.
The opening track, “School”, shows keyboardist Richard Davies showing very early on that while other keyboardists at the time were experimenting with new technologies and sounds, he was busy simply taking a classic piano song to an entirely new level within a rock song. Likewise, in the next track, “Bloody Well Right” they band documents how to make something mainstream yet respectable, and John Helliwell plays the song out with a magnificent saxophone solo. John continues his exceptional playing through the next track, “Hide in Your Shell”. While the band through these first three tracks have not done anything individually groundbreaking I can’t help but call the song-writing progressive in the sense that it builds on available ideas in a way that is unique to the band. Although the vocals provided by Roger Hodgson and Richard Davies certainly stand out, there is something about the music that specifically stands out as Supertramp.
This is perhaps most apparent on the track “Asylum”. A beautiful and surreal track, “Asylum” documents how well Supertramp can use piano and string arrangements in their music. Although fans have debated whether or not Crime of the Century is a true concept album, buy the start of the classic track “Dreamer”, one could easily begin to believe that it is, simply because of how well all the music seems to flow, how it seems to connect and build.
“Dreamer” and the two tracks that follow continue to exhibit the excellent songwriting that is in abundance on the record, until finally the album comes to an amazing conclusion with the albums self-titled track. Beginning with a beautiful lyrical section the song then features a simple but effective guitar “solo” followed by an amazing album outro that ranks among my favorites of all time, despite its relative simplicity. It’s not hard to conceptualize, it’s not fast paced, it doesn’t require a music degree to understand, but it does capture the emotion of the album perfectly, in a way that I personally see as progressive, even if others do not.
As soon as an album has a few popular singles people seem to have a problem calling it prog. However, despite my insistence that Crime of the Century is a progressive release, what’s truly important is how good the album is. Call it classic rock, pop, or prog, a rose by any other name will still smell sweet, and this album will still be amazing, no matter how you classify it.
Nick’s Rating: 9.5/10