'All Washed Up' by Cheap Trick (2025)
In one sense and one sense alone, Cheap Trick is to pop-rock fans what KISS is, or was, to hard-rock fans: a heralded representative of a durable subgenre, with at least two irreplaceable founding members and careers in recording and touring that retain momentum from a heaping handful of 1970s classics.
With its 21st studio album, All Washed Up, the pride of Rockford, Illinois, offers another 11 examples of its craft: guitarist Rick Nielsen mixes power chords with tasty licks; lead singer Robin Zander puts his lungs into the rock and his crooning throat into the pop; and bassist Tom Petersson holds down the lower end no matter what else is happening.
Producer Julian Raymond is a longtime collaborator, and drummer Daxx Nielsen and guitarist and backing vocalist Robin Taylor Zander have experience with Cheap Trick both as players and as sons. Each musician knows what to do and sets about doing it with professional flair.
The title track revs the album into life with a more insistent version of the ready-to-go horniness that drove “She’s Tight,” a minor and very memorable 1982 hit. “The Best Thing” is a harder variation on the balladry of “The Flame,” a 1988 chart-topper the band did not write. And “Dancing with the Band” restrainedly revives the rock ‘n’ roll energy of signature songs like 1978’s “Surrender.”
Latter-day Cheap Trick can sound a little darker, a little harder-edged: “The Riff That Won’t Quit” finds Nielsen stomping on that riff and furiously tearing off notes like Slash, while “Love Gone” works a touch of George Harrison-style slide guitar into the dramatic resignation Zander conveys so well.
Yet All Washed Up ends with “Wham Boom Bang,” a willed whimsy buoyed by adorable woodwinds and a folk-bluesy acoustic guitar. Not all the momentum comes from the 1970s classics.
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