Rockford, Illinois, has long gone out of its way to pay homage to Cheap Trick -- without a doubt the town's most important export -- and now, more than three decades into their recording career, Rick Nielsen and company return the favor. The 12-track Rockford offers up a veritable crazy-quilt of styles that pick up the flavor of just about every pit stop the quartet have made along their quirk-filled trip through pop culture history. The disc packs more of a punch than any recent Cheap Trick release, with songs like the spiraling riff-fest "Come On Come On Come On" -- which goes the Von Bondies one better in both title and energy level -- and the surprisingly brawny "Welcome to the World." That's but one side of the Rubik's cube presented here, however: "If It Takes a Lifetime" wafts along with the sort of melodic urgency that imbued classics like "Surrender," while "Oh Claire" revisits the whip-smart bubble-pop that colored the margins of much of 1977's In Color. Yes, they also dip into the power balladry that gave them a second commercial life, circa "The Flame," on the Linda Perry-penned "Perfect Stranger" -- which, if nothing else, proves that Robin Zander's croon is still as dreamy as ever. It's only the icing on Rockford's cake, however, and that confection is as multi-layered and filled with surprises as anything Cheap Trick has ever cooked up.
