Music @ XMART.US

Luis Mejia (son) – When a person recalls Chicago efforts around 1975, the main characteristics among those works is TIRED. In barely 6 years, Chicago had already released 8 different albums, and their excessively full agenda with live performances, they needed a good rest! Even after such a delicate work as Chicago II, its notorious they were still recovering from that production, as even the same album was composed between flying in airplanes, motels, etc, and this was mainly notorious on Chicago III, where it was suspected that the band’s talent was already filled. In contrast, Chicago VIII was released after their personal jazz experience in Chicago VII, where they were able to express their joy of making such material throughout their vivid performance and potential, while Chicago VII is not a complete failure, though one of their worst, where their emotion for this new material is barely weak. Chicago VIII is one of their earliest works on a closer territory into their later more consistent pop/adult contemporary genre, it still possesses a truly recognizeable style, where its real talent is reflected on specific moments among the songs. Not as virtuos, creative or inspirational as their past album, although it keeps a different kind of magic, still an experimental one, but you can be sure that this album is much better than the later foolish, funky, disco atmosphere seen in Hot Streets. Anyway, the album keeps its spectatives into a standard popcraft, not their best songcraft among their pop/soft rock beautiful style, while still possessing a comfortable cohersion.Other aspects like very slight jazzy traces left by their previous album, and some rocker features are present. It was also their last album to go on #1 on the Billboard charts, but its notorious that its place on the Billboards was their least enduring, lasting 23 weeks. Chicago VII still have a couple of famous songs in the album, remarking the most famous in the album,Old Days, a nostalgic, uncompromising soft song that went as a hit, peaking at #5, it is the only song in the album which is truly recognized as a very famous song, and certainly the best song in the album, while Harry Truman went also as a minor hit, but its silly tunes, geeky style and ridiculous melodies makes it one of their worst. The album even starts weak with the R&B opening Anyway You Want, its foolish style and Cetera’s fatidical emotion takes off a great deal of talent from the song. Oddly, the album quickly gets in line with Brand New Love Affair – Part I And II, and Never Being In Love Before, both fantastic and beautiful songs, Brand New Love Affair is a very slight adult contempo effort, it also resulted in another minor hit, while being a beautiful but uncompromising, orchestrated and powerful song with a strong romantic flavour, and Never Been In Love Before is a Beach Boys’ influenced song, while being a poppy, mellow love song, although much lighter. The later Hideway takes its main riff from Mountain’s “Mississippi Queen”, and its a more hard rocking song, although not a very talented or acclaimed composition, while Till We Meet Again is a brief but consistent love song with a fantastic acoustic guitar performance. Oh, Thank You Great Spirit is Terry Kath’s much personnal tribute to Jimi Hendrix, who was actually an early Chicago fan and specially from Kath, the song is a hard rocking, 7 minutes long song with great potential, it even contains a snippet of Hendrix’s “Purple Haze”, while Long Time No See and Ain’t It Blue? are both Lamm’s compositions, Long Time No See stays as one of the best and most underrated songs in the album, its a fantastic, powerful composition with the best instrumental performance in the album, plus being the only song containing Parazaider woodwind duties, and Ain’t It Blue is a memorable, cathcy song in which Kath and Cetera alternate vocals, is alike with the early Chicago Transit Authority song Dialogue (Part 1 And 2). The Bonus Tracks are some jazzy, previously unissued instrumentals. All in all, this is not Chicago’s worst album, although one of their worst comparing it to other masterpieces, it doesn’t assemble a very well stablished popcraft, although an enjoyable and quite recognizeable album.
Rating: 3 / 5

This was a dissapointment. No long instrumental tracks or great arrangements like VII. There are some good moments when compared to albums after X but they were definitely headed in a different direction. The best part of the original album was the COOL “iron0on” that was included with the album. Too bad they can’t re-issue that. I always wanted one on a levi jacket.
Rating: 3 / 5