Todd Rundgren "Runt" (3*)

Whether you regard this effort as the self-titled debut of a band called Runt or as Todd Rundgren’s solo debut there’s no arguing where it lies in the Rundgren chronology which is, as far as I’m concerned, all that matters.

At the initial time of release, Runt was identified as a trio consisting of Rundgren (guitars, keyboards, vocals), and brothers Hunt (drums), and Tony Sales (bass), sons of comedian Soupy Sales who went on to collaborate with David Bowie in Tin Machine. The entire album was written and produced by Rundgren,who’d freed himself from the Nazz, but wasn’t quite ready (by all accounts) to go solo. As he stated about the subsequent Runt: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren there were some things he couldn’t quite manage yet, and most of them involved rhythm section duties.

What he had managed to get his head around, however, was the studio, collecting an engineer’s credit for The Band’s Stage Fright, recorded at Albert Grossman’s Bearsville Studios in upstate New York and persuading Grossman that he had something to offer from his own artistic bat.

That should have been obvious from his stint with The Nazz, but here he’s out to demonstrate his ability to cut it on his own, presenting a blend of guitar driven power pop and piano-based ballads that come across as an interesting fusion of elements and hinted at interesting things to come.

Rundgren’s guitar work drives Broke Down and Busted, a gospel blues psychedelic workout before the first of the piano ballads (Believe in Me). The piano’s at the forefront for We Got to Get You a Woman, the breezy slice of Brill Building soundalike that turned into a minor hit (as it should have, it’s a rather classy number, very well put together in a  Laura Nyro meets Carole King fashion) and the poppy stuff continues with a rocking and surprisingly cheerful (given the circumstances) Who's That Man.

Rundgren drops the Carole King vocal tone on the next piano ballad, Once Burned, which may or may not have anything to do with the guest appearances from The Band’s Rick Danko and Levon Helm. There’s a bit more drive in the hard-hitting and rather power poppy Devil's Bite and Rundgren’s sarcastic streak comes to the fore in I'm in the Clique, a biting commentary on the state of the music industry with bustling riffs and repetitive  robotic vocals in the verses.

That same quirkiness also lurks behind the absence of lyrics in There Are No Words, with echoes of Gregorian chant and dash of Brian Wilson, and the Laura Nyro piano elements are back (he even checks her by name) at the start of Baby Let's Swing/The Last Thing You Said/Don't Tie My Hands, five and a half minutes of classy pop medley before another pop suite (nine and a quarter minutes of Birthday Carol) takes the listener through a fair proportion of the tricks up the Rundgren sleeve.

Birthday Carol’s subdued classical intro, an instrumental passage that has odd echoes of early Steve Miller Band with subdued horns that drifts into blues-styled guitar workout, harmony soaked piano ballad, subdued folky bit that builds back into rocking guitar and horn-driven R & B that drops back into classical territory doesn’t quite add up to everything and the kitchen sink, but it’s not far off.

File under: Signs of things to come. If you’re not familiar with the man and his work this wouldn’t be a bad place to start.

Todd Rundgren "Faithful" (4*)

Todd Rundgren’s seventh album is another example of the positive side of the era when you needed to get up out of the armchair (or whatever) and physically manipulate the source of your listening pleasure (assuming you weren’t listening to the radio)...

While 1976 was comfortably into the cassette era, the medium you used when consuming your taste in music was still a two-sided affair, something that delivered possibilities you don’t get with the everything on one side CD or the carry your music collection in your pocket MP3 device. The need to turn the item in question over to continue listening delivered some interesting possibilities when it came to sequencing content.

The mid-seventies, with the artistic torpor that had settled in after the heady days of the late sixties when, literally, anything was possible was a prime time for revisiting the artist’s roots, often, in the cynic’s view of things, because the artist didn’t have enough new material that was good enough to stack up into a viable recording project. You can cite any number of examples, from Bowie’s Pin-Ups, to Bryan Ferry’s solo works, The Band’s Moondog Matinee and John Lennon’s Rock & Roll, and there have been any number of similar efforts over the past forty years but Faithful takes the task of replicating your influences a step further than most, matching a side of almost perfect recreations of '60s classics with a side of new material that’s obviously influenced by the other side but is also the product of another decade’s worth of experience.

Of course, there’s also a fair degree of exhibitionist behaviour in there as well, what with the look ma, see how close I can get to original masterpieces, aren’t I a clever boy? factor that you suspect was lurking below the surface. Rundgren, one notes, originally shot to prominence as a studio whiz-kid who could also write and play a bit.

So, setting out with the intention to deliver faithful reproductions that amount to replicas of the originals, your mileage is going to vary in accordance with your inbuilt why bother? factor. Most of the replicas would have coincided nicely with the origins of Rundgren’s early band, The Nazz, and the Yardbirds’ Happenings Ten Years Time Ago or The Beatles’ Rain would quite possibly have turned up in the Anglophile outfit’s very early set-lists.

Those renditions would have been pretty standard fare for Stateside garage bands with Anglophile tendencies, and given his status as the jingle jangle voice of his generation it’s no surprise to find Dylan’s Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine) finding its way into the mix, though it mightn’t have been one of the most obvious suspects.

On the same basis, once he’d been elevated to blowing his countrymen’s minds after unrecognised years on the chitlin’ circuit, Jimi Hendrix’s If 6 Was 9 would have found its way into the average garage band’s setlist assuming the guitarist could get his fingers around Jimi’s licks, and if you were looking towards the look ma, aren’t I a clever boy? factor as far as classic 1960s psychedelic-era songs that needed to be replicated by a studio whiz kid are concerned Good Vibrations and Strawberry Fields Forever would be pretty close to no-brainers.

According to Rundgren the motivation behind all this was to treat the material as if it was classical music, with the pieces being performed without much departure from the magnificent original, and that’s pretty much what Rundgren achieves here. Close enough to be impressive, just different enough to have you recognize that it isn’t The Yardbirds, Beach Boys, Jimi, Bob or the Fab Four.

Proceeding from there to the original material, there’s a clavinet at the forefront of the hard-edged, heavy-rocking Black and White with flashy guitar grooves combining with layered harmonies to deliver a punchy slab of power pop, and Love of the Common Man matches a straightforward chorus with an intricate vocal arrangement to produce something that’s sunny and very close to lighter than air, infectious stuff that’s quality pop.

It’s at this point that some of us start scratching our heads and wondering why he bothered with the covers on the other side, and there’s a partial answer in When I Pray a sort of bossa nova singalong with a catchy ya ya yo chorus that heads across into what sounds awfully like mockery. One I suspect will be getting the shuffle treatment after today...

The sunny pop is back on Cliché, which works a bit better than the previous track but doesn’t quite get back up to Common Man territory,  with a strong melody, the trademark intricate harmonies and a sweetish, if clichéd ending. The album’s showpiece, however, comes in the seven and a half minute analysis of the meaning of The Verb "To Love", a lush, slow-building Philadelphia soul ballad that teeters on the edge of becoming overblown and probably needs something like the guitar based rampant pro-vegetarian propaganda of Boogies (Hamburger Hell) to round things off before the album ends.

Recorded with a four-piece Utopia (in this version, Roger Powell, keyboards; John Siegler, bass; Willie Wilcox, drums), Faithful comes across as mildly schizophrenic, impressive enough to remind the listener of Rundgren’s ability to write, arrange and record quality straight-up pop songs as well as the major artistic statements he seemed to be heading towards in the wake of Something/Anything.

Todd Rundgren "Hermit of Mink Hollow" (4.5*)

He’d been doing most of it on his own for a while, and as far back as Something/Anything he’d completed three sides out of four without assistance, but when Todd Rundgren’s eighth solo album arrived in 1978 it was credited to Todd Rundgren - Arranger, Instruments, Producer, Vocals and no one else. In between he’d been working with assorted session players and the members of Utopia, and had been pushing the limits of how much you could fit into the grooves of a single disc (A Wizard, A True Star) but Hermit headed back in the opposite direction, with eleven tracks clocking in just under 35 minutes (compared to Wizard’s nineteen and a tad under fifty-six minutes).

That mightn’t matter much in real terms, and Rundgren had been fairly prolific so you’d be inclined to suspect he’d have to slow down eventually. Alternatively, you could look at the breakup of his long term relationship with Bebe Buell, glance at the title and figure there’s this heartbroken bloke sitting in his cabin on Mink Hollow Road just west of Woodstock and this is all he’s been able to come up with.

Which would make sense if we were back in the Laura Nyro/Carole King territory he’d been working earlier, but despite the presence of a truly great break-up ballad (Can We Still Be Friends) and a couple of titles that might support that sort of hypothesis (Hurting for You, Too Far Gone, and, maybe You Cried Wolf) what we’ve got here is an interesting exercise in largely cheerful and upbeat power pop.

Actually, if you were looking for forensic evidence re. terminated relationships it might make more sense to return the tracks to the sequence listed on the back cover, which was what Rundgren delivered to the record label. Bearsville, in their wisdom, thought the original sequence was “too haphazard” and asked Rundgren to split the album into an “Easy Side” (comprising the lighter, poppier songs) and a “Difficult Side” with the cerebral or rockier songs, with the quirky Onomatopoeia, which would definitely qualify as “Cerebral” getting a guernsey on the “Easy” side...

A more combative Rundgren might have told them to butt right out, but he claims to have gone along with the request because it made no difference to him and, conceptually, the record didn’t suffer for it. The sceptical listener, of course, with plenty of hard drive space, a second import into iTunes and a bit of fiddling with the track numbers, assuming you’ve got a smart playlist or something to keep the two separate (I’ve got one called Unheard, where the Plays is 0, but there are undoubtedly other ways) can put him or herself in a position to compare and contrast.

Both versions kick off with the happy, upbeat and semi-anthemic All the Children Sing, and while Rundgren’s version followed it with Too Far Gone, Out of Control and Lucky Guy, the Bearsville resequence slots the gorgeous Can We Still Be Friends in as Track Two. Upbeat starter, followed by one of the all-time breakup ballads that sequences into the pure power pop territory with Hurting for You and Too Far Gone. The latter, with an airy chorus hovering over Latin rhythms delivers an interesting assessment of the ups and downs of Rundgren’s career from family and friends.

As far as winding up Side One is concerned, whether you’re looking at Easy and Difficult or One and Two, the very clever Onomatopoeia is followed by Determination, an impressive slice of power pop that winds up the first side rather well. Your mileage may vary as far as Onomatopoeia is concerned, but to me it’s a rather clever bit of studio wizardry that mightn’t have much point beside a demonstration of the man’s editing skills but still works as a combination of audio dictionary definition and word play. I do, after all, have a thing about word play...

Turning the attention to The Difficult Side Rundgren turns social agitator on Bread, three minutes of power ballad about starving Americans living below the poverty line, and continues in the same territory with Bag Lady, a piano ballad that verges on the melodramatic but has its heart in the right place.

After that the listener probably needs something a little more upbeat, and You Cried Wolf‘s bouncy assessment of an ex-lover’s false alarms in the commitment department meets that requirement fairly well. Rundgren drops it right back for the melancholic piano-driven Lucky Guy, which followed Out of Control in the original sequence. In the other setting, however, it’s about time for a howling up-tempo raver. Out of Control fits that requirement to a T and both sequences conclude with Fade Away an exercise in sumptuous harmonies that winds things up with a closing statement that works as well as All The Children Sing does as an opener.

With the tracks sorted into both sequences it’s difficult to say which one works the best, and I’m inclined to agree with Rundgren’s assessment that the Easy Side/Difficult Side idea wasn’t a problem and that the record wouldn’t suffer for it. As it is, I have ‘em both, and in an environment where you’re going to be playing your favourite tracks on shuffle the album sequencing isn’t really an issue, is it?

In any case, regardless of the actual sequence, what we have here is a collection of
snappy, cleverly arranged quality pop songs that’s possibly the best, and definitely the most accessible, thing he’d done since back around Something/Anything. That’s not to suggest they’re all classics, but it’s a remarkably consistent collection that’s remarkably free of duds and candidates for the shuffle button.

Todd Rundgren "Runt: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren" (3*)

While Todd Rundgren’s second solo album was originally credited to the band (Runt) that’s probably because there were a couple of things Rundgren couldn’t do well enough yet. He wasn’t ready to play drums, and hadn’t quite got his head around playing bass, which explains the presence Norman D. Smart, John Guerin and Hunt Sales behind the drum kit and bass lines courtesy of Tony Sales and Jerry Scheff. Everything else (guitars, keyboards, synthesizer, saxophones, percussion and vocals) is Rundgren, largely worshipping at the Church of Laura Nyro and Carole King.

That’s noticeable from the beginning of Long Flowing Robe (great chorus) and on through The Ballad (Denny & Jean). Guitar comes to the fore in the riffier Bleeding, which doesn’t work as well as its predecessors, though the guitar solo is rather flashy. Wailing Wall is back in piano-driven singer/songwriter mode, pleasant enough, but pretty forgettable shuffle forward material for mine.  Better is the piano-driven The Range War which isn’t quite country & western, but is definitely Western, as in Wild, the Hatfield and McCoy feud sort of rewritten into Romeo and Juliet territory.

Don’t take yourself too seriously/there are precious few things worth hating nowadays, and none of them are me are the opening lines to Chain Letter and they’re probably the best thing about the track, at least until the sort of  anthemic “carry on” ending kicks in about half way through the track. Clever but, in the long run fairly pointless.

There’s some pleasant falsetto in A Long Time, A Long Way to Go, but the song itself is bordering on the fluffy side. Any lighter and it would blow away, and you could say much the same about the multilayered vocals on the piano-driven Boat on the Charles, which delivers some atmospherics sounds pleasant enough but doesn’t quite manage to grab the attention and Be Nice to Me, which exerts a bit of fragile charm, but doesn’t really insist on it.

Hope I'm Around is a tad catchier, another piano ballad that works rather well, building to a mildly anthemic ending and Parole brings the guitars back to the fore on a sort of I Fought the Law vibe that’s a little too clever to reach outlaw territory. Fifty seconds of Remember Me winds things up, concluding a collection of songs that are obviously the work of a skilled operator and, now that the play count has climbed to 8 aren’t likely to progress too much further.

Sure, there’s a degree of wit there and the album has its own charm, even if it’s a rather low-key who’s a clever boy then sort of charm, but in an environment where a track will need to grab the attention before Hughesy hits the shuffle button I don’t like their chances (assuming the play count reaches the point where they’re in the Top 5000 Most Played.

And for the Top 1500 in a library that’s crawling towards 40,000 tracks? Two words. Iceblock and Hades.

Todd Rundgren "The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect" (3.5*)

Todd Rundgren's tenth studio album is a close to perfect example of what happens when record company and artist stop singing from the same hymn sheet, due to a perceived lack of promotion for the artist’s preferred creative environment.

Bearsville, according to Rundgren’s view of things, wasn’t supporting Utopia (his keyboard and synthesiser heavy prog rock outfit), and while he’d managed to extract the band from their clutches the label still had some idea that solo Todd was a marketable commodity and weren’t about to let him go without extracting another solo record from him.

In such circumstances, on the other hand, one wouldn’t be expecting the artist in question to be spending a great deal of time and effort fulfilling a contractual obligation, and the Tortured Artist title probably delivers a fair indication of the way Todd saw matters.

With Art Direction, Engineer, Instruments, Producer and Vocals credits to Rundgren, the album was released in November 1982 and even produced a hit in the form of the infectious Bang the Drum All Day. All in all, given the background it’s a fair bit better than the listener might expect, though I’m left wishing he’d stayed right away from covering the Small Faces’ Tin Soldier. That’s not picking on Rundgren, by the way. Tin Soldier, for my money anyway, is one of those gems that’s almost impossible to cover respectably, let alone match unless, of course, you’ve got a singer with a fair degree of Stevie Marriott’s throaty heartfelt roar. Sadly Todd ain’t got it.

Or perhaps that’s the point. The pop sound that runs through the rest of the album might be heavy on the synths and is probably the sort of thing Todd could knock out in his sleep, and even running on autopilot there are a couple of fairly classy bits of pop rock here.

One of them is the opening cut (Hideaway), which might be painting by numbers but presents a rather interesting picture, as does Influenza, which is clever, but not too clever by half. Don't Hurt Yourself is pretty good advice, delivered with a veneer of sincerity and rather attractive layered vocals in sort of Hall & Oates territory, with There Goes Your Baybay inhabiting a neighbouring postcode.

The cover of Tin Soldier can only be described as ill-advised unless, of course, it’s in there to prove a point. If it is, and the point is the one I suspect he may have been making (look how far things have gone and what I’ve been reduced to) it sort of succeeds, but not enough to escape shuffle on past this one territory.

It’s fairly obvious Todd has a thing about Gilbert & Sullivan, which is where Emperor of the Highway is coming from. Mileages will vary according to your G&S tolerance, or willingness to listen to reasonable approximations thereof. Bang the Drum All Day delivered a hit, and while it bubbles along quite merrily the first time or three, repeated exposure on a regular basis is probably something to avoid.

The synths send Drive off down the hard rock highway in a pretty much take it or leave it manner. It’s not annoying enough to have me hit shuffle, but I wouldn’t go out looking for it either), and Chant provides a lively way out of the album, and it’s one that hardly sounds like a tortured artist at work.

As a collection of pure pop with a fair dash of synthesised soul Artist works well enough, not quite Rundgren’s best work, but under the circumstances it was never going to be. It mightn’t be a match for, say, Hermit Of Mink Hollow, but it’s not bad. Infectious in places, and enjoyable enough in its own way, but worth going out of your way to track down?

A slot is the five album collection I found it in is, I think, around the right environment. I shelled out the dosh for Hermit and Faithful, got a bit of a discount, and, on that basis, a Tortured Artist comes as a bonus.