Album Review: Boston, by Boston

If there was a great band who delivered a lot of memorable music on a per capita basis, a band that had a small discography with a lot of worth, Boston would be high on that list. Yet for some reason I have never thought to listen to Boston’s rather modest discography all the way through. I intend on rectifying this (as I am listening to a few bands one album at a time but trying to vary it so that I don’t get tired or bored of any band in particular) starting now. Boston’s debut album is (unsurprisingly) one of the biggest selling debut albums of all time, with its first three songs right out of the gate being all-time great songs (we will get to these shortly). Some albums are obscure and provide a mystery, but with this album the question is not so much whether the album is a worthwhile one (on the strength of its first 3 tracks it is without a doubt a great album already) but how the whole album stacks up as a whole compared to its stellar beginning. We know Boston’s debut is amazing, and we know that people at the time in 1976 thought so as well. Is this album a rare one in which every track is at a high level or is it merely great? That is the question.

Given that there are only 8 tracks here that take up less than 40 minutes of time, that is not a lengthy question to answer, at least. The album begins with “More Than A Feeling,” which is an all-time great melodic rock song, a song about the nostalgia about listening to great old music which is a great old song that one is nostalgic about. With soft but poignant verses, a driving guitar pre-chorus, and classic song-along chorus make this song a standout. “Peace of Mind” follows, with a driving and then melodic intro that leads into a song that expresses the desire on the part of the narrator for peace of mind, an elusive thing, and a stated desire to eschew the rat race that comes off as entirely sincere given the laid back pace of Boston’s discography. After this comes the suite Foreplay/Long Time which contains some wonderful guitar noodling, keyboard patterns, and solid bass and drum work in the first part of the song, and then transitioning to a more conventional driving rock song after about two and a half minutes that expresses a certain restlessness on the part of the narrator. These three songs are regularly played on classic rock stations to this day. How does the rest of the album hold up?

Continuing into the less familiar part of the album, we move into “Rock & Roll Band,” which is a straightforward enough melodic song about the group’s commitment to live off of rock & roll music, which is an ambitious but difficult task. If this song isn’t quite as well-remembered as the first three it definitely belongs with them in terms of its production and instrumentation. Following after this is “Smokin’,” which finds the narrator committing to having a good time even if he is continually told that he will eventually have to pay a price for the way he is living. Here again we find the narrator committing to living the life of a rock & roller before the album goes into a long and gorgeous and surprisingly haunting instrumental bridge. “Hitch A Ride” then follows with a gorgeous and heartfelt song expressing the narrator’s desire to leave everything behind, presumably to seek that elusive peace of mind. “Something About You” continues the alternately meditating and driving instrumentation that has marked the album so far and turns attention to an expression of devotion to a partner with whom he has a troubled but passionate relationship full of regretted hurtful communication. The album then closes with “Let Me Take You Home Tonight,” which has an almost country-rock introduction to a straightforward romantic song that seeks to encourage a woman to go home with him tonight, which cannot have been a very hard sell in those days.

In listening to this whole album, it is not surprising to me that I find it to be an all-time great album with every song being an 4.5/5 or above. What is surprising to me is that the album leaves me with such a complicated set of feelings. In looking at the album as a whole, it has a cohesive style of instrumental and vocal production, full of elegant overdubs, consistent instrumentation with some diversity of sounds but a clearly coherent approach to music and lyrics, and a remarkably complex emotional palette for its somewhat narrow material. Despite a laser-like focus on three basic themes: a desire for peace of mind, a commitment to being a successful rock & roll musician no matter what other people think, and a passionate longing for romantic love, the album strikes a highly schizoid approach where the crosscurrents of the lyrics are matched by instrumentation that strikes decidedly complex emotional resonance where the driving guitars and confident self-expression is undercut by nostalgia, regret, and uncertainty about the result of one’s self-expression on one’s relationships with others. Even at the beginning of their career, Boston was already expressing a tension between seeking a career in music as a means of self-expression and a longing to escape the intense pressures of competition and commercial success, all while making one of the most successful debut albums in rock & roll history, which only intensified the pressure to follow-up the album with something that would resonate as strongly with the music buying public as well as the longing to escape this pressure through isolation from a demanding music industry.