Def Leppard's new album Yeah! is an all covers affair featuring the songs that influenced the band. Covers albums are often dodgy, an excuse to put out a CD and try to get a radio hit by copying an already popular song. Even with the best intentions, covers albums can sink under their own crapitude (Joan Jett's The Hit List comes to mind). However, sometimes a covers album can bring a band back to the basics of what made them great (Aerosmith's recent Honkin' On Bobo does that). Other times, a band can't write good songs to express how they truly want to sound (Metallica's Garage Inc did everything they tried to do with Load and Reload but with better songs). Yeah! manages to do a bit of the latter two, bringing the band back to their basic sound while relieving the pressure of writing good songs to do it.
Def Leppard thankfully sheds the "adult contemporary" stance they took on the ballad heavy X album of a few years ago. Yeah! finds the band loose and rocking, serving up a big dose of 70's glam rock minus the mascara. The obvious influence of Sweet comes through on the albums best song, "Hellraiser". The T-Rex "20th Century Boy" grooves on a great riff. "Drive In Saturday" has a catchy melody and touch of whimsy to it. Songs by Thin Lizzy, ELO, Badfinger and Free are represented here as well. The album's overall sound strips away much of their trademark overproduction to a raw guitar heavy sound complete with real drums (they don't sound like electric rubber balls as they did on Hysteria). The performances are "in the pocket" delivered with flair and passion. The biggest surprise comes at the end with guitarist Phil Collen taking the lead vocal on the Faces "Stay With Me", where Collen musters a better performance than Rod Stewart probably could in this day and age.
There are some negative points to the album. The whimsy injected into "Drive In Saturday" gets sucked out of the Kinks "Waterloo Sunset". David Essex's "Rock On" is a song I personally find unbearable under any circumstances (plenty of other people like it, I just think its garbage). Many of the song arrangements are similar to the originals which begs the question: why not just listen to the originals? They also lose points for repeating an idea, Def Lep had a previous album Retro Active which had many covers on it as well.
This album may translate into a fans only party, but being a fan of Def Leppard I find this album really refreshing. After listening to this once great 80's band spend the last 15 years struggling to find its voice, it's fun to listen to them cut loose with a flat out rock album that's not concerned with following the latest trend. This album is fun enough to rate a 7.5 out of 10.
Another artist that tends to ignore trends is Number 85:
Steve Miller Band - Greatest Hits 74 - 78 (1978)
After spending the 60's as a successful "also ran" in the San Francisco psychedelic rock scene, Steve Miller found himself in a new role as arena rocker in the 70's. Miller's new career started with "The Joker", a humorous ode to being high (at least as far as I can tell, I've been drunk but never high) with it's loping beat, laid back vocal and rhymey chorus. The Steve Miller sound started there, though the loping beat was replaced with a propulsive blues groove. Steve Miller scored a run of hits in this style, such as "Rockin' Me", "Jet Airliner", "Jungle Love" and "Swingtown". At times, Miller could slow down into atmospheric tunes like "Winter Time" and "Wild Mountain Honey". Steve Miller's signature hit is "Fly Like An Eagle", a song known for its cool organ riff and the refrain at the end of the hook (Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin', ...into the future). It's also known as the US postal service theme song. My personal favorite is the strutting, handclap happy "Take The Money And Run" which tells the story of a pair of criminals on the lam.
Steve Miller's style in the 70's was economical arena rock. The guitar riffs were engaging and the songwriting was catchy, yet Miller was never as flashy or overblown as the other arena rock bands. Steve Miller didn't endlessly wail or growl in his vocals, no speed-of-light guitar solos and the bands name was more than one word (unlike Journey, Styx, Foreigner or Boston). Steve Miller seemed to be a blues loving musician who found a period of time where he could make his music fit in with others while not sacrificing his integrity.
Interestingly, I didn't become a big fan of Steve Miller until the early 1990's. I was in a big Steve Miller phase when I began dating my wife and played this tape in the car often. A few years later, my wife bought tickets to see Steve Miller live at the Fillmore in San Francisco for my birthday. To our surprise, Steve Miller played nothing but blues for what seemed like three hours (not a single hit song!) . Still, it was a great show that highlighted Miller's tasteful, refined playing style and made me a fan of the song "Evil" which is included with his Box Set. "Evil" is a slow burning blues song featuring a scorching guitar solo and the most emotive vocal I've heard from Miller.
Ultimately, Steve Miller produced "good time" 70's rock that sounds its best when cruising down the highway with the volume cranked up loud. It's rare to hear a rock artist succeed with restrained craftsmanship in place of showboating and hype, but Miller has done exactly that. Greatest Hits 74 - 78 captures an underrated artist at his peak.
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