Released July 4, 2014 Artist Chicago Label AVALON | Producer Hank Linderman Release date 4 July 2014 Genre Rock music | |
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Recorded 2013 (2013)–2014 (2014) Similar Chicago albums, Rock music albums | ||
Chicago xxxvi now album review
Chicago XXXVI: Now, sometimes stylized as "NOW" Chicago XXXVI or Now: Chicago XXXVI, is the twenty-fourth studio album, and thirty-sixth overall by Chicago. It was written and recorded in 2013—2014, and was released on July 4, 2014. Aside from the sprinkling of new tracks found in the band's many compilation and cover albums, Now is the band's next full album of new compositions in the eight years since 2006's Chicago XXX, and it is the next release of original material following 2008's fifteen-year-delayed Chicago XXXII: Stone of Sisyphus. This album marks the first original Chicago credits for veteran musicians Walfredo Reyes, Jr. and Lou Pardini, since joining the band.
Contents
Production
The album was produced in a geographically distributed, "just-in-time" fashion. Noted by the band's cofounder Robert Lamm as "a very sort of disjointed way to work", Now's production model was largely enabled by a fully mobile system of the band's own design called "The Rig". It was recorded primarily in hotels and secondarily in studios along their American tour, constructed mostly from each musician's isolated performances in between concert dates, and then synchronized via a private Web portal site for final overdubbing by coordinating producer and engineer Hank Linderman. The band's songwriting members are each respectively credited as each track's "supervising producer".
Even throughout the album's year-long development, audio preview clips of each track were progressively released via the public Internet — some before they were completed by the addition of the band's signature brass section. The first preview, "Naked in the Garden of Allah", was released in April 2013, the album was finally made available for preorder in April 2014, and was released July 2014.
The ultimate goal was to make music — and now we’re doing that. We’re going to see how far we can go with this. Thank goodness we have 46 years of track record behind us. We’re just trying to grow the legacy even more.
Reception
Beginning in April 2013, the Something Else! webzine engaged the band's progressively released preview clips. They said that "Naked in the Garden of Allah" "reanimates" the band's early "cutting" political messages, wherein "the lyrics, and the song’s turbulent textures, speak to both the horrors of war and to Lamm’s enduring pleas for peace". "Watching All the Colors" is said to resemble Robert Lamm's 2008 solo sessions from The Bossa Project, and "Something's Coming, I Know" "rumbles along with a more scuffed-up cadence — until it’s broken up by this sun-streaked, Beatlesque bridge". Recorded on the tour bus, Tris Imboden's drums on "Crazy Happy" are said to "sound modern and appropriate for the song and mesh seamlessly". They complement the album's percussion, as provided by "the great Walfredo Reyes Jr."
It entered the American Billboard 200 at #82.
Allmusic's Stephen Erlewine assigned 3.5 stars out of 5, calling the album "united in sound and sensibility, anchored upon the splashy horn-fueled jazz-pop they pioneered in the '70s but usually returning to the slick professional adult contemporary of the '80s", with songs that are "big, smooth, cheerful, and bright, emphasizing melody over instrumental interplay, explicitly evoking the past without re-creating it".
Personnel
The band's composers are each respectively credited as each track's "supervising producer".
Songs
1Now4:57
2More Will Be Revealed5:11
3America4:04