CRIME OF THE CENTURY

Another Supertramp album with no reall fillers. And a high capacity of singles....as so many of these songs indeed known to a much much wider audience.....and many of them became singles over the years. Who doesn't know...Dreamer, School or Crime Of The Century......Supertramp was never a band that had a habbit of creating long epics and over the years they only wrote a couple of songs that were clocking over the 8 minutes...like Fools Overture or Brother Where You Bound are rare. Something that I always found odd, cos also in this...the band shows great capacity.

I think together with Breakfast In America this album is the most famous album of Supertramp....and pretty have their unique trademark all over.....and there are some truly amazing songs on this album.....Like Rudy, Hide In Your Shell, Bloody Well Right and I think one of the most beautifull songs they ever wrote : Crime Of The Century. Especially towards the end this songs evolves in a great melody...that often was live extended a bit longer...During the 98 tour for example....was this song used as a truly phenomenal ending....of a great (and long) setlist.

The album is very much caracterized by Roger and Rick's beautifull singing....I always thought I prefer Rogers singing...but the problem is that so many of their best songs are in fact sung by Rick.....Apart from that Rick contributes some stellar pianoplaying (that was live even better).....which is another very obvious characteristic of this album...and of Supertramp in General. Another review is drawing the relation between Hodgson and Davis and McCartney and Lennon....I dont know if I can agree with that I must say...the relation Waters and Gilmour comes into mind as much more adequate...but its certainly true that just as the Beatles,...Supertramp was capable of greating some extremely beautifull and melodious tunes.....this eventually makes Crime Of The Century more a pop album than a progressive Rock album.....So to a progressive rock lover I think this album is not essential.....but certainly to any lover of good, emotional, sad and dramatic music...this is an album you cannot miss in your collection.