UTOPIA

"There goes my inspiration" (He said it!)

This album should not be confused with the band's first album, which goes under the name of "Todd Rundgren's Utopia". By the time of this 1982 release, it was becoming all but impossible to distinguish between Todd Rungren's solo material and that of Utopia. The classic line up of Rundgren/Powell/Sulton/Wicox had been in place for over five years and while as usual the song writing credits are democratically listed as being by "Utopia", Rundgren is clearly once again the principal protagonist.

That said, all four band members get the opportunity here to take on lead vocals, while providing harmonies on other tracks. The album has variously been described as new wave, two tone, and power pop. Certainly there are elements of all these styles, but the overriding impression is that this is little more than a follow on from the Beatles parody "Deface the music" release in 1980. Tracks such as "Feet don't fail me now" and "Say yeah" for example sound like outtakes from that album. With the tracks all lasting around three minutes (or less!), the emphasis is very much on pop. This being their first (and only) album for the young Network label the band, and Todd in particular, was keen to give them something which would be commercially appealing.

Among the better tracks are "Libertine", a Kasim Sulton lead slice of power pop, and "There goes my inspiration", a typical Rundgren ballad. "Hammer in my heart" accentuates the new wave feel, with a thumping beat and a decent guitar break. "I'm looking at you?" is pretty much a straight clone of "Love is the answer", but works nevertheless.

In all, an enjoyable if basic album of short pop songs. The band are without doubt masters of the art of composition and performance, it's just a shame they do not chose to challenge themselves to exploit their talents more fully.

This was the band only album for the Network label. Following well publicised difficulties with Bearsville, not least of which was the fact that the band were increasingly unable to shift any meaningful quantities of their albums. It has to be said, this was not helped by an almost complete absence of marketing. Rundgren, who had a long association with Bearsville, finally managed to extricate himself only to find that Network went bust a year later.

Incidentally, when originally released, this was a double album, the fourth side being exactly the same as the third. The five tracks which appeared on sides three and four were dropped when the album became a single LP disc, but restored to the CD version.

Utopia could be considered as a band version of Todd Rundgren - they certainly saw eye- to-eye with this, self-titled release from 1982. Sadly, not really anything to do with prog. Having said that, it is a neat album of catchy and clever pop tunes, highly melodic, sometimes quirky, with each member contributing 100% to the songs, either in vocal performance or on their respective instruments, of which the overall mix is well balanced, with some excellent synth playing from Roger Powell, and Kasim Sulton's solid Bass work. Some songs border on the cheezy side, but definate winners are : Libertine, Feet Don't Fail Me Now, I'm Looking at You...., There Goes My Inspiration and Princess of the Universe. I have some video clips of songs from this album and it's nice to see that the guys never really took themselves that seriously, just having some fun - but it's a little disappointing that their talents weren't focused towards more progressive ventures, as they had done before with 'Ra' or with Steve Hillage on his album 'L'.

Originally released as a three sided album, this one caused me to lose faith in Utopia, and sell the LP shortly after buying it (I now have the CD as part of a complete Todd Rundgren collection I won from Rhino).

At this point, Utopia had completely abandoned their original progressive roots, and focus completely on short, unchallenging pop ditties. This once majestic band put out an album of radio friendly songs that escape from your memory withing minutes of listening to them. Sure, the guys could still play, but there is nothing of interest to a prog fan here.

As for the LP, the best side was side 4 (the blank one).