Listening to this album in the context of other albums so far on this list, I came to think of Supertramp as a sort of English Steely Dan. They blend prog-rock elements with pop, so although the songs tend towards a complex structure they don’t have the long noodling bits. Compared to another art-pop group, 10CC, Supertramp also seem less impressed with their own lyrical cleverness.
This aspect isn’t entirely absent. Dreamer, the big single from this album, for example, asks at one point “can you put your hands in your head?” (to pull out the thoughts and dreams) and later turns it around to “you put your head in your hands” (as the dreams are not met). As the songs on the album go, this for me was the least interesting, perhaps due to over-exposure as is often the case.
More exciting is Asylum, a rock ballad about being committed to an institution, reaching a great crescendo of screams and howling before drifting to a denouement with some gentle piano, a track worthy of David Bowie (I may be thinking of All The Mad Men). Rudy is another big epic song that gets surprisingly rocky and funky, while the poppy stomp Bloody Well Right ends with a very nice jazz sax solo from John Anthony Helliwell. The title track Crime Of The Century is another big build to a musical crescendo, built up from simple piano phrases overlaid with saxophone and strings.
I don’t particularly care for the Supertramp singles that get played to death on the radio – Dreamer, Breakfast in America, The Logical Song - in part because of the John Anderson style high vocals from Roger Hodgson. When Rick Davies takes lead they’re a little less shrill. But I liked the album tracks on this album, and of the three “art-pop” groups so far Supertramp strike a happy medium for me between Steely Dan (too many elements) and 10CC (trying too hard to be clever).
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