Cheap Trick – The Riff That Won’t Quit Review

What is worse? Using grim, artificially generated imagery ironically which implies the band are as washed as the machines on the cover, or not understanding that is the read most will have of an upcoming album? A cheap trick, it surely is. The Riff That Won’t Quit is your usual, late-stage rocker fodder from a band whose legacy will be tarnished by the final twenty to thirty years of their career. They’re a long way from the Budokan now. So too are listeners, who should expect more of these flimsy, rock royalty offerings. All too many of these well-respected legends are returning to the studio with little interest in recording. It serves a new tour and suggests it is not just the hits in heavy rotation. The Riff That Won’t Quit sounds like Cheap Trick gave up long before recording. It’s easy to poke holes in these pathetic rock and roll riffs. Behind the times slop paired with technology that has duped the stupid into believing it’s the next big innovation.  

But that’s very much the audience of modern-day Cheap Trick. Those who are listening to The Riff That Won’t Quit are those who cannot separate their own identity to bands who they listened to growing up. It’s okay, happens to the best of us, though usually with better artists. What makes The Riff That Won’t Quit such a shame is not just the repugnant use of technology from a bubble ready to burst or the stagnant instrumentals, but the fact that this song wastes a strong musical voice. Robin Zander still sounds marvellous, and had he been given material stronger than this, then Cheap Trick could have been onto a satisfying return. Stranger musicians than the Ghost Town hitmakers have made revolutionary work in the studio but the muddy, almost indifferent instrumental mix on The Riff That Won’t Quit keeps Cheap Trick in their congested lane.  

Mercifully short and not at all sweet, the lead problem of many for this song is it says nothing, innovates little, and has no concept of relevant rock and roll riffs. Cheap Trick were trendsetters fifty years ago and it seems they have made no adaptations to genre changes in that time. It dates their sound completely. What worked before does not necessarily work again. An artist who fails to move with the times, to react to the world around them or even feed in a line of contemplation or cultural connection is doomed to the nostalgia circuit where only those dedicated, blindly following fans will be engaged. Such is the case for The Riff That Won’t Quit, a tiresome track despite a graceful brevity. How clear can you get when the title is merely repeated, over and over.  

Nauseating work from a band who should know better. But stagnation in the studio means Cheap Trick are content to play up the stereotypes of a sound which left them behind in the history books around the late 1970s. Promises of playing the blues never come through because the guitar riff, which is almost lost in the mix, is incapable of considering what a blues-rock tone could mean for the band. Even a minor change that isn’t just aimless, noodling fretwork would have given The Riff That Won’t Quit some boost. Instead it’s, somehow, worse than Twelve Gates, the lead single of what is shaping up to be a rock and roll dud. It’ll not be notorious. The revolution wasn’t televised, and neither was the downfall. Cheap Trick fizzled out years ago, and whatever puddles of liquid leak out as they flog the dead horse are now being bottled up and sold in these sloppy projects. The Riff That Won’t Quit can be legally defined as music, though so too can smashing your hands through a bass drum.