It’s a self-deprecating remark that sums up the wry humour that has always set Cheap Trick apart from the crowd. That wit, and their sometimes outright weirdness, helped place them in a zone where they shared some of the cartoon-archetype status the Ramones achieved.
Looking back to 1977 and that wonderfully spiky debut, it’s no surprise they faced some hostile audiences who preferred their ‘rock’ a little more on the straightforward side. People couldn’t quite figure them out until the Japanese got their appeal and gave them the screaming-fan, rock-star status they deserved. How could audiences have overlooked those killer songs before they were recorded live onstage at the Budokan?
Of course, the hits eventually left them with an identity crisis, with outside writers parachuted in by anxious record labels, to the horror and consternation of long-term fans. But that’s all long behind them. They endured the lows and kept ploughing on, influencing grunge and alt-rock to not-always-acknowledged depths.
Twenty-one albums later, some would ask why even bother releasing new music when plenty of their contemporaries are content to ride the oldies circuit, playing the crowd-pleasers until the last man or woman standing.
The reality is that Cheap Trick’s work from the late nineties to today is a hell of a lot more consistent, in a positive sense, than their problematic eighties ever were. Clearly, being a living, breathing, creating entity still means something to them, as the opening title track makes very apparent. Tipping a nod and a wink to their own 1980 vintage All Shook Up, “All Washed-Up” is an energised power-pop battering ram that riffs like crazy; classic Trick that swiftly gives way to the chugging strut of “All Wrong Long Gone”, where Robin Zander demonstrates that his vocal abilities remain supernaturally intact. Meanwhile, Nielsen’s underpinning ascending guitar part takes us back to prime-time Heaven Tonight territory.
Despite the odd detour into efficiently likeable filler – exhibit A: “Rocking with the Band, Dancing with the Band”, All Washed-Up doesn’t outstay its welcome and even holds back Beatlesque gems like the affecting “A Long Way to Worcester” for the final stretch.
Yes, it’s an unashamedly ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ record – but who really cares when the results are so enjoyably convincing? At this stage of the game Cheap Trick are wholly entitled to remind the world of their brash and noisy brilliance and that’s precisely what All Washed-Up succeeds in doing.
