BREAKFAST IN AMERICA The group also have good lyrics to couple

Supertramp with their excellent musicianship.

Whether they are singing about urban
A&M; Dyna
despair (“Rise with me brother/Stick
(Angel) with each other” in “Just Another
Nervous Wreck”, a paranoid’s song, if
BECAUSE WE KEPT ON ANTICIPATING there ever was one), or the archetypal
the release of several records, we prodigal son (“Goodbye Stranger”),
completely overlooked the gold that was whether it’s about the nadir of a
already on the racks for months now. relationship (the tongue-in-cheek
The album, of course, is Supertramp’s “Casual Conversations”) or romance on
Breakfast in America. It is good song the run (“Take the Long Way Home”),
after good song: the pace never lets up, Supertramp never fails to drive the point
and could very well rival The Cars’ home.
Candy-O as this year’s best album. It is,
without a doubt, the finest art-rock (such My personal favorite, though, is the hit
a pretentious term but I have to use it) single “Logical Song”. In the tradition of
album perhaps since Katy Lied. great anti-establishment anthems “My
Whatever, it is the perfect album to save Generation” and “Satisfaction”, it never
you from a cultivation wipe-out: it is so lets the sarcasm take a back seat. Which
musically rich it fills your speakers. is just as well. Supertramp may be the
perfect antidote to the test-tube baby
Supertramp is led by guitarist Roger generation. –JUANIYO ARCELLANA
Hodgson and keyboardist Rick Davis;
who also co-write all of the group’s
material, and offer a potent songwriting
threat to the Becker-Fagen institution.
The songs are basically full of hooks and
catches that keep the music pulsing
through the whole forty minutes or so
that the record spins on the turntable.
There is also the organ-piano
combination in most of the songs, and
not since Procol Harum and Traffic has
this been used as effectively. There’s a
saxophone to add much-needed texture,
while other songs (“Gone Hollywood”,
“Child of Vision”) are layered with
synthesizers. The guitar lines come only
occasionally, but when they do they cut
through the song with a surgeon’s
precision.