EVEN IN THE QUIETEST MOMENTS ...

This album marks the third with the band's iconic lineup. This one takes more of a laid-back approach compared to the previous two. Most of the songs still carry over that anxious quality that defined the sound of the band. But rather than having the music talk about you, it's talking to you. This gives it a freer, less self-conscience feel and the music works along with that; shaving off a lot of the heavier prog-rock build-up for a softer sound.

Give A Little Bit is the album's big single. It's a very recognizable song, featured in horrible bank adverts that ruin any nuance this track hopes to have (you know which one), to coffee shops in Red Bank where some asshole who happens to have fingers decides to pick up a guitar and bastardize all of music in four minutes. It starts with this warm welcome "here we go again", it's a good way to tell fans of the previous two albums what sort of affair they'd be getting into. All of Supertramp's albums have this sorta start, telegraphing the sound of the record. It's very poppy, and as an album opener it's meant more to give people a bright first impression of the album with the song they probably bought it for. And in that way it secedes the best way it can. The lyrics are very sweet, aside from most of it being very cheesy Roger does throw in a lot of great lines, "There's so much that we need to share so send a smile and show you care." It's a prime example of how to use kitsch in music, which may turn off a lot of other prog fans who are more concerned with deciphering Supper's Ready than finding some bitches, but who cares about those nerds anyway.

Lover Boy is the 1970s version of a red-pilled sigma alpha hyper super proto-male. Instead of having Andrew Tate or whatever other YouTube rug-puller telling him how to objectify women, the lover boy gets all the things in his head from a book he's read. It's freaky how much this song relates to people who act this sorta way today. "It's from a book he's read, it's got a funny title, it tells you how to be vital"; the book having a funny title is like modern red- pill influencers (or whatever you would call them) having engaging content, it draws stupid people into the content but doesn't mean there's much substance to it. The entire song is built on lines like this, I'm not gonna explain my interpretation of all of them here, I'm sure you can interpret them on your own, I believe in you. It's clear the lover boy takes himself very seriously and wants others to also take him seriously. And that's what this song centers around, his ego. He's imagining someone singing a song about how good he is at being awesome. The guitar riffs that go about in the background make it really exaggerated, they're really stupid and rocky, and they make this song about such a stupid dude so subtlety goofy. The backing vocals all speak against what Rick is saying, and what the lover boy is thinking about himself. It's like his inner self trying to tell himself how wrong he is. And the lover boy's trying to ignore how bullshit his plan is, and how much of an asshole he's being.

Even In The Quietest Moments is a worried love song. About hoping your love comes back/accepts you back and shelters you from whatever horrible things are going on in your life. It doesn't do much on its own, but it's carried gracefully by the backing vocals, progressing instrumentation, and the acoustic guitar which circles this track, picks it up nicely at the start, and places it down nicely at the end. Not one of their most in-depth tracks, but a great sounding and nicely constructed one regardless. It also matches the cover art very well, aside from the sheet music. It has that nature feel to it, of course helped by the birds and other nature sounds at the beginning.

Downstream features only Rick Davies on piano and vocals. A love song much in the same vein as The Beatles' Octopuses Garden. His voice alone moves a lot of weight, every word he says has so much meaning, it's so personal and so pure. Being recorded in one take it was left out of much of the tampering and perfectionism that Supertramp where prone to. It matches the cover art even more so than the previous track. Being about finding comfort with your other, the winter landscape very much matches the idea of hiding away with them.

Babaji is the odd one out on this record. You'd expect a Supertramp song about using spiritualism/religion as a coping mechanism to be overtly critical and sarcastic. But no, it's genuine. The song is a bop and a great example of Hodgson's pop composing. But it's so hard looking past the lyrics when so much of their music requires you to focus on the lyrics to wrap your head around the instrumental.

From Now On doesn't get nearly as much appreciation as it should. It's got everything a song could hope for. The different parts collide and create such a bittersweet ending. The textures the song touches on throughout its runtime build up a detailed personality for our protagonist. It bounces around, looking for someplace to land but still ends up in much the same place where it started (sound-wise). This is a lot like what the lyrics are talking about, getting bored of life, trying to find an escape, and fantasizing about a different life not remotely as mundane, like being a robber who escaped the law and now lives in Italy. That Italy part is the only part of the song reaching for a different sound, but still comes crashing down on where it came from. The protagonist settles at the end, accepting that the only way to even hope to have a less boring life is wasting your current life dreaming of living others.

Fool's Overture is a behemoth. One of the great epics, rightfully so. The build-up it manages in ten minutes is mind- boggling. Starting off like In The Flesh? Being very calm and content, but unlike In The Flesh? there is an aura of something coming. The second part features Winston Churchill's "We shall fight on the beaches" speech. This points out what we do as a species to guarantee our safety against ourselves. Then the synths come in like some sort of fanfare starting off the next part. It continues to get more grounded and shaped until the piano and vocals start. The lyrics start off talking about how delicate your life is and how we should cherish it, "take to the sky." The next verse starts with "Called the man a fool, striped him of his pride" implying that whoever said that we should take to the sky was ostracized. I think that this was because the people who ostracized him were scared of change, scared of affecting the way of life they fought and died for. They couldn't see the good the fool was destined to bring. As dramatic irony, we know the good the fool was going to bring before he was cut out. The song is a revolutionary song about fighting for this dream the fool had. Instead of the plain "oh geez wiz, everything's bad, we should like come together, right now, over me" revolutionary song, at its core is a lot more delicate. The power of the track is carried by what seems to be a crowd of people hearing what the singer has to say and following him. The end of the song is super bombastic, most of the final verse is chanted, and the crowd has taken over and started carrying the message of the fool. The last couple of seconds are chaos as the orchestra comes to a halting stop, the instruments make some last squeaks and that's where the song ends. The amount of stuff that goes on in these ten minutes is unparalleled by anything else like this. An incredible ending to close another incredible album by this band.