Adventures in Utopia

Artist: Utopia
Label: Castle Essential
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Format: Original recording remastered
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1
EAN: 5017615876123
ASIN: B00002DDTK

Release Date: 2000-06-20

Adventures in Utopia

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Tracks:

Road to Utopia
You Make Me Crazy
Second Nature
Set Me Free
Caravan
Last of the New Wave Riders
Shot in the Dark
Very Last Time
Love Alone
Rock Love

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Album Description

Digitally remastered reissue of 1980 album by Todd Rundg ren's art/ prog/ power pop group. 10 tracks, including 'The Road To Utopia', 'Set Me Free', 'You Make Me Crazy' & 'The Very Last Time'. Also features the original cover art and liner notes with new interviews. 1999 release.

Customer Reviews:

Too bad they never did the TV show.......2006-07-28

This is the second more commercial, pop-oriented Utopia album, after 1977's Oops! Wrong Planet, but of course, Todd Rundgren has never been a stranger to pop music, despite progressive/art rock tendencies and excursions.

Track 1, "The Road to Utopia" 5/5
This flirtatiously begins as a progressive track for the first minute and a half before turning into a pretty straightforward, beautiful pop song. "Beautiful" is no surprise. For a long time, it seemed that prolifically writing beautiful, catchy pop songs came to Rundgren as easily as breathing. That Rundgren didn't have constant radio hits is one of music's great injustices. Or maybe not. He might not have as consistently produced interesting music in that case.

Track 2, "You Make Me Crazy" 5/5
This track is a very interesting combination of a 60s pop song and new wave. A Cars influence can be heard, which is ironic now, considering that Rundgren is currently in "The New Cars". Great singing from drummer "Willie" Wilcox and interesting bass playing from Kasim Sulton. Sulton's bass on the prechoruses (and the way that Rundgren changes chords on the verses) makes them sound far more outside than they really are, and of course the third verse is just wonderfully outside overall. I love the melody in the prechoruses and the chorus, and the interplay between Sultan and the "background vocals" on the chorus, which have a subtle, odd flanging effect on them.

Track 3, "Second Nature" 5/5
Except for the discofied drumbeat on the chorus, this could have easily fit on Rundgren's Something/Anything?, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's a leftover song from that period. In any event, a typically gorgeous melody/harmony on a catchy tune. A bit short, but there's nothing wrong with short pop tunes.

Track 4, "Set Me Free" 5/5
A song wholly written by Sulton. This has great, unusual verses, where the chords, dominated by Roger Powell's Rhodes keyboard, build and change without repeating. In fact, I'm not sure there's any guitar on this track at all. The chorus makes you want to get up and dance and sing along like you're in a gospel church. Smokin' but relatively simple sax solo--I love the ending.

Track 5, "Caravan" 5/5
And talk about simple but effective, that's what the guitar riff on this song is all about. There's one ringing kinda dissonant note (maybe just dissonant because of the flange effect on it) towards the end of the phrase that makes it even better. Rundgren repeats it as an ostinato under the smooth verses while chord changes on top of it wax and wane the tension (especially with respect to that one note)--that's one of my favorite compositional devices. The choruses have a strangely attractive cheesiness to them. The bridge, which ends up being constructed like a concise, traditional jazz improv (and this is recurs in the outtro), is surprisingly heavy. I love the keyboard solo with the heavy effects. Rundgren does some killer guitar work on the outtro.

Track 6, "Last of the New Wave Riders" 5/5
The heaviness continues. But the song becomes almost a spoof (as we might have guessed from the title) when the vocals enter; it's very funny. Kinda Queen-ish. Still, this song isn't just a spoof. There's a great melody in the chorus and there are some unusual things going on structurally in the verses. The bridge is very much progressive hard rock, often retaining the Queen references. The overblown ending is very funny, too.

Track 7, "Shot in the Dark" 5/5
And then Utopia makes a Queen-ish left turn, first suggesting a Professor Longhair-like sauntering blues in the intro, played by Powell on the piano. But suddenly, things get new wavy again. The verses are orchestrated in a way that suggests alien reggae. Melodically and harmonically this is much more a traditional rock tune, but the orchestration and production make it much more.

Track 8, "The Very Last Time" 5/5
The vocals are oddly mixed a bit back on this track, but it's a great song. Pretty straightforward for Utopia. Beautiful choruses again.

Track 9, "Love Alone" 5/5
This has a really soulful chord progression, played beautifully by Powell, who is the only instrumentalist on this track, with great singing again from Sulton and the rest of the band on Queen-like background vocals. This would have been a great closer, but the album unexpectedly goes to--

Track 10, "Rock Love" 5/5
A disco party! This is another very tongue-in-cheek song, but very good and catchy. Very funny lyrics. Sulton really cooks on bass throughout, especially on the chorus. I love the chord progression and harmonies on the prechoruses. The end of the bridge/solo segueing to the prechorus is odd and genius. Don't miss the over-the-top scream from Rundgren near the beginning of the outtro.

Waited all night... smoked a hundred cigarETTES!!!!.......2006-01-28

Truly a cool album! I've always liked Rundgren, and he assembled a crack band in "Utopia".
Some really memorable songs, ranging from "prog-rock" to pop to ballads to punk-ish anthems on this album.
"The Road to Utopia" is an incredible lead-in to this album. One of the catchiest tunes I've ever heard. In the same league are "You Know You Make Me Crazy", "Rock Love" and "The Very Last Time" (LOVE the lyrics to that one!).
"Love Alone" and "Second Nature" do up the ballad thing quite nicely.
"Last of the New Wave Riders" just kicks ass as a "New wave/punk "anthemic" song.
"Caravan" Easily the best song on the album. This one's the "prog-rocker". Great singing, a beat that don't quit and fantastic guitar.
Finally, I saw these guys live right after this album came out... one of the best concerts I've ever attended. Love the album, and I highly recommend it.

almost like the Beatles, but too 80's.......2005-09-02

We have this one in the car sometimes and I kinda like it although it not perfect. But the songs are pretty hummable and it flows pretty smotth. The only thing is that it has a real "boxy" sound. Something about the way it sounds is just to 80's. My girlfriends ex-boyfriend got it for her birthday a few years back and he actually had the nerve to tell her to give it back. He also wanted her Footlose video back. I told her to give that one back, that music is so cheesy in that movie. That "never never never" song is pityful.

An exemplary showcase of Todd and the boys.......2004-10-24

I love this album as much today as I did when I received my first vinyl edition in 1980, before I realized what a masterpiece I had. The musical variety clearly demonstrates why Todd is such a sought after production consultant to so many other artists, and has an almost cult-like following of fans. Some might think that this collection illustrates why Todd has not had all the commercial success he so richly deserves, because it crosses and even pulls together different genres without a consistent style. On the contrary, his ability to appeal to fans of different music without compromising his artistic creativity in the name of commercialism is commendable. If you are looking for technical production that was innovative for the era, catchy tunes and lyrics as well as some that will make you think if you listen carefully, and a general album that has something for everyone, I highly recommend Adventures in Utopia.

Utopia's Reasonably Big Adventure.......2004-01-09

The second album from Utopia Version 2.0 (Top 40 rock, as opposed to the semi-prog rock of the first few albums) must have surprised a few onlookers, as it was the band's highest-charting LP, hitting #32 in Billboard (just three notches below leader Todd Rundgren's biggest solo LP, "Something/Anything?"). The performances were somewhat tighter than the previous album, "Oops! Wrong Planet," but no one wrote anything quite like the hit "Love Is the Answer" (which, unfortunately, became a hit not for Utopia but for soft-rock dudes England Dan & John Ford Coley), and therein lies part of the problem.

Not really knowing what would make the biggest commercial success (late 1979 and 1980 was a schizophrenic time in rock & roll, with disco being ushered out the door, punk dying off, and new wave not yet having gained a solid foothold), Utopia threw a little of each in the mix. This is a good band - Roger Powell and Willie Wilcox are very good at keyboards and drums, and Todd and Kasim Sultan are multi-instrumental talents. But the songwriting isn't strong here - "Set Me Free," a Top 40 hit, is catchy but inconsequential, and "Last of the New Wave Riders" combines a theme begging for a catchy arrangement with a synth-heavy bombastic arrangement. And while these guys are pretty good singers, the harmonies won't make me forget the Beatles (obviously their fervent hope, although I suspect they weren't targeting me specifically when this was released).

Still, I've always been impressed with the disco/rock hybrid "Rock Love" (which could have been a single in the wake of Blondie's "Call Me"), "You Make Me Crazy" is a clever pop song (enhanced by a now out of circulation video), and "The Road to Utopia" may be one of the catchiest things the band has ever done. So it's a mixed bag - which is one of the charms (or irritations, depending on your point of view) of Todd Rundgren's solo and group output as a whole.

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