The Latest (2009)
1. Sleep Forever
2. When the Lights Are Out
3. Miss Tomorrow
4. Sick Man of Europe
5. These Days
6. Miracle
7. Every Day You Make Me Crazy
8. California Girl
9. Everybody Knows
10.Alive
11.Times of our Lives
12.Closer, The Ballad of Burt and Linda
13.Smile
From the outset, it is impossible not to admire the band’s enduring resolve. By any conventional metric,
they could have wound down their creative engines decades ago. Yet, here they are, still recording, still releasing, still searching.
Since their first official release in 1977, Cheap Trick have operated in a peculiar slipstream: bypassed by the charts,
undervalued critics, yet revered by musicians and a loyal, knowing fanbase. That they remain standing—respected, influential,
and still producing—should be recognized as a triumph.
With The Latest, the band returns, astonishingly, just a few short years after the warmly received Rockford.
But if Rockford was a revitalized and coherent statement, The Latest feels, at times, like a brilliant
sketchpad—unfinished ideas jostling for space, moments of beauty undercut by haste.
The opening track, Sleep Forever, is a fragile elegy—stripped down, emotionally raw, and over before it has
the chance to settle. Zander’s vocal performance is, as always, unassailable—yet placing this 96-second whisper of
grief at the front of the album suggests either extreme confidence or curious sequencing. The same can be said of the
band’s Slade cover, When the Lights Are Out. Though it’s performed with characteristic zeal, its placement so
early on—its retro feel bordering on pastiche—confuses the narrative. One might mistake it for a long-lost B-side from their 1977 debut.
The remainder of the record unfolds like a restless tour through Cheap Trick’s various sonic faces.
We get glimpses of effortless pop brilliance—Miracle, Miss Tomorrow, The Ballad of Burt and Linda—melodic
craftsmanship that rivals their very best. But these are interspersed with curious pivots into muscular hard rock
(Sick Man of Europe, Alive) and truncated experiments like Everyday You Make Me Crazy,
which ends just as it begins to suggest something truly compelling.
It’s not that the songs are weak. In fact, nothing here is less than serviceable. But what The Latest
lacks is cohesion—an overriding sense of identity. One suspects that, with more time, a single unified vision could have been teased
from the diverse threads on offer. Instead, it plays like three EPs shuffled into one LP.
Still, to dismiss The Latest would be unfair. For all its unevenness, there are flashes of brilliance that only Cheap Trick can deliver.
If nothing else, the album serves as a reminder: they’re still here, still writing, and still reaching for something just out of frame.
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