Something / Anything? by Todd Rundgren (Vinyl record album review)

Album name: Something / Anything?

Artist name: Todd Rundgren

Year: 1972

Number of discs: two

Label: Bearsville Records

Collection: Brenner / Gessner

Who owned it: my mother

Buy it on Amazon: $65.84

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I have heard of Todd Rundgren, but don’t know anything about him.

What I expected

Folk rock.

What it was actually like

This was a really bad record, and I strongly disliked it. As a double record, it was also way too long, and I couldn’t make it through the whole thing.

A lot of it was what I would call easy listening, such as It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference, Cold Morning Light, Sweeter Memories and Torch Song.

Various parts were R&B, such as I Saw the Light, which was not bad at all and had pretty good rock guitar.

Other parts were more progressive rock, such as Breathless, which had some techno.

The Night the Carousel Burned Down was very slightly Oompa Loompa, and sort of in the genre of Faul’s granny shit, except nowhere near as good.

To describe Song of the Viking, just imagine if Monty Python had decided to write and record a song with that title, and that’s what Rundgren’s song would be like (musically, it sounded like Kaveret, though).

Couldn’t I Just Tell You was a 1970s stadium rock song, but very poppy.

Little Red Lights was crappy proto-metal, atonal noise and extremely unpleasant.

Side 4 started with a cover of Money (That’s What I Want) that sounded like a studio demo, not a serious recording, and I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t just record it for real to include on the record.

Grade

1/5: horrible enough that I couldn’t make it through