10CC are one of those bands that I’ve never quite been able to decide if I like or not. I *think* so, but sometimes they try just a little too hard to be clever. Listening to this album, it occurred to me that they’ve got some similarities, musically, to Frank Zappa, with witty lyrics and lots of musical changes in any one song, not to mention a will to experiment with different musical genres.
Unlike Zappa, however, 10CC are somewhat less willfully silly and scatological, despite a song on the album called The Worst Band In The World where they play some lumpy-sounding riffs (that are actually far more musically clever than they seem). They are also somewhat less chaotic, and one of the things that makes their songs more enjoyable as pieces of poppy art rock is that usually feature a good hook in the chorus that stays with you.
Songs range from the satirical to the absurd, skewering financial greed in the big single Wall Street Shuffle, or US appeasement of rogue Gulf states in exchange for oil in Oh Effendi (a country number sounding like something from the CSNY stable). Wall Street Shuffle has a good example of the lyrics that I think are trying slightly too hard - “you need a Yen to make your Mark if you want to make money”. Double currency puns? You spoil us.
The songs that seem to exist purely for fun are the fake dance craze The Sacro-Iliac, another vaguely country-rock track. Clockwork Creep is a frenetic song told from the point of view of a bomb on an aircraft (is that funny? It's certainly unique). Hotel is a calypso about the damage caused by out-of-control tourism. In terms of music and subject matter, the album goes all over the place but manages to do so in a way that means that it stays interesting rather than confusing.
Although, talking of confusion, I’m still not entirely sure if I like 10CC or not, but I do appreciate them more thanks to hearing them in context of musical development.
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