Dream Police (1979)


 

  1.Dream Police
  2.Way of the World
  3.The House is Rockin'(with Domestic 
    Problems)
  4.Gonna Raise Hell
  5.I'll Be With You Tonight
  6.Voices
  7.Writing on the Wall
  8.I Know What I Want
  9.Need Your Love

 

This album sold better than just about anything in the band's catalog and actually charted in the top ten. They were clearly riding high from their success from At Budokan. To be truthful though, the band lost something with this album. It's not that it's bad - in fact this one is quite good, it's just that they lost a little (a lot, really) of the "pop" in the "power pop" that was this band's trademark. It should be noted that most of this album had been completed before the surprising sucess of At Budokan, and since the band hadn't had much success yet, they may have been trying to shake things up a little bit.

As mentioned earlier, this one really is a great rocker. Songs such as Dream Police, The House is Rockin', I'll Be With You Tonight and Writing on the Wall all come across as powerful and pack a pretty strong punch. Bassist Tom Petersson sings lead on I Know What I Want and does an o.k. job on a superb song. To be honest though, there's a reason why he hasn't sang lead on anything else since. They also feature one of their better known ballads Voices that (I think) barely cracked the top 40.

The two longest songs on the album are probably also the weakest. Need Your Love is an o.k. album closer. It's a bit bogged down at nearly eight minutes and a little too slow for most fans. This is the only song on the album that was also featured on At Budokan. Then there's Gonna Raise Hell that clocks in at over nine minutes that closes side one. This one has a little bit better of a bite to it but still feels weighted. They would perform both of these songs frequently at concerts and they sounded much better than there studio counterparts.

The band also seems to incorporate more keyboards this time around and even uses orchestral arrangements on many of the songs that never seem to really help matters that much. The expanded bonus edition of the CD released years later featured the song The Dream Police without the orchestra and it sounded a whole lot better - almost sounded like it belonged on one of their first three albums. Fortunately though, this one still remains a great listen and has stood the test of time well.


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