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| Title: | |
| Notes: | Review of the "Just Supposin'" album |
| Year: | |
| Country: | UK |
| Publication: | |
| Author: | Bob Edmands |
STATUS QUO
Just Supposin (Vertigo)
YOU MIGHT think they're called Status Quo because they never change, but that's simply not true. On the one hand, they still can't count past twelve, but on the other they have got richer, older, more self-conscious.
Men who ride in limousines acquire pretensions, and Status Quo's pretention these days is to quality. They like their records to sound sharp, polished, even well-crafted. A definite touch of the Abbas, alas.
The old boys still contrive that distinctive eunuch-style harmonising, but they no longer quite sound like the Everly Brothers trapped in a heavy metal discotheque.
The problem is the guitars, the bass and the drums. You can hear all of them separately. There's no longer that awesome wash of muddy sound.
Francis Rossi once told me that their old records sounded rough by accident. That gloriously ragged row was all a mistake. They couldn't get the studio to work for them.
He was quite pleased they'd put all that right in recent years. Personally, I'm appalled, but then I'm probably 15 years older than the average StatusQuo fan who probably wouldn't recognise the vintage stuff anyway.
This album's opening track 'What You're Proposing' is already a single hit, but the riff actually sounds as though it's played on acoustic guitars recorded by high-grade technology.
From then on, it's downhill all the way, with lowspots including a nimbly arranged Beatles soundalike called 'Don't Drive My Car', a decorative plodder misleadingly titled 'The Wild Ones', and even a harmony ballad 'Rock 'N' Roll'.
No doubt the Quo are all better musicians than they were 20 years ago and no doubt their records still sell in vast quantities, but the young ruffians have turned irredeemably into calculating old businessmen.
Bob Edmands