RHAPSODIES

When the creator of an album or any piece of art themselves are somewhat baffled by it, you know you're in for something that is... less than desirable. Rick said of the album at one point that Rhapsodies as an album was "probably the most confusing [he had] ever made," apparently because of its untethered diversity(?).

That's certainly a good way to view this album. But not all is lost. The least I figured I could do (as I often enough try) was provide personal highlights. Most notably is "Stand-By", the strongest of all the tracks in my opinion. Most exciting, most interesting, and least grating (and that's to say that a good half of the tracks were indeed grating or even unlistenable). The other two tracks I would suggest if you're going to otherwise write off this album are "Big Ben" and "The Flasher".

It's more than acceptable, I would say, to, at most, flip through this release (that is to say, I kind of hope you didn't purchase it). A lot of the textures and sonic choices did not age well at all. Hokey. Cheesy. Bad. Something I try to do, regardless of how I actually rate an album is to see for myself an aggregated average rating for all the tracks (sometimes this gives me a better idea what to rate the album overall). In the case of this one the average was 2.6875. What's nice about that is how near it is to what I was going to say anyway: 2.5/5.0