BROTHER WHERE YOU BOUND

Without Roger Hodgeson, Supertramp is dead for me. I hate Rick Davis' "ox" like voice and with the exception of a couple of Rick songs in the previous albums-- I skip his songs and move on to those with Roger in the vocals. Besides Rick's compositions are also not outstanding. Roger has extreme octave range and there are only a handful vocalists who can take their octaves as high as he does (well certainly there are some others who take it higher). When I first heard this album in 1985, I was in the height of my Supertramp mania. I did not know about Roger's departure and it was a shock to me when i frantically skipped one song after another to find out his vocals. Man was I disappointed. How can I swallow a whole album full of Ox like voice? Still for the love of Supertramp, I listened to the album again and again and deducted that it was the best ever work of Rick till that time (well after that, I did not buy any more of Supertramp's new albums). But I can live without that. Cannonball is a disco-era style song. Any prog-lover in the eighties would agree that they hated disco-style songs back at that time, believing that this disco & new wave upsurge had killed prog-rock. So my feeling about that song is 'go to hell'. the next two songs have no particular significance. However the album gets better from Better Days-- which is based on a nice piano riff and even the ox-vocals sound good in this song. this has the supertramp flavour that i know before. The jewel in the crown in this album is the title track Brother Where you Bound. Clearly, here Rick has challenged my pre-concieved notion that Supertramp was not sold out to "discofying" its music. The idea and the music of this song is great. I just wish Roger gave the vocal to make it replayable till I could tire out. Its a great song. Though Ever Open Door appears to be a filler, this has nice melody and I liked it too. A three star from me, mainly because of the title track.