Supertramp - Even In The Quietest Moments

Interesting fact. The piano on the cover of Supertramp's Even In the Quietest Moments is actually covered in real snow, and the sheet music isn't Fool's Overture, it's The Star Spangled Banner. They left an empty piano shell outside at a ski resort overnight, and this is the album before Breakfast in America.

I don't completely agree with Christgau, but his sentiment is pretty great: most prog-rock is pretentious background schlock that's all too hard to ignore, but this album is modest background schlock that sounds good when it slips into the ear. 

I'm biased because 1) i just like Supertramp, and 2) this is what Breakfast in America is actually about. I pointed out that album was about Hodgson and Davies having very different world views but making and playing this music gave them a common purpose. They wrote most of their songs separately and then fleshed them out as a band in sound checks and rehearsals. Their styles are quite different, Davies is very specific and tells a story while Hodgeson is more vague and open to poetic fancy like the hippie he really is.

Christgau is right that this isn't the wackadoodle type of prog-rock like EL&P or Kansas or Jethro Tull or Early Genesis, the songs are bigger and more interesting than simple verse/chorus rock songs, and that's not schlock in my book. For starters, who are they pandering to with what cliches or stereotypes? Ugh, all those dreadful people who like songs about the complexities of love and life, and feel skeptical about buying those experiences from a magazine, or learning how to love from a book. At its core, this is music for listening. It's not supposed to be background at all, it's supposed to be the art medium. No, In The Quietest Moments isn't the theatrical production most people might expect, but it's quite an enjoyable listen for anyone who appreciates the humor in calling the last song an Overture after all the various fools already gave their monologues. I do.