Chicago: Chicago II

CHICAGO: CHICAGO II (1970)

1) Movin' In; 2) The Road; 3) Poem For The People; 4) In The Country; 5) Wake Up Sunshine; 6) Make Me Smile; 7) So Much To Say, So Much To Give; 8) Anxiety's Moment; 9) West Virginia Fantasies; 10) Colour My World; 11) To Be Free; 12) Now More Than Ever; 13) Fancy Colours; 14) 25 Or 6 To 4; 15) Prelude; 16) A. M. Mourning; 17) P. M. Mourning; 18) Memories Of Love; 19) It Better End Soon (1st Movement); 20) It Better End Soon (2nd Movement); 21) It Better End Soon (3rd Movement); 22) It Better End Soon (4th Movement); 23) Where Do We Go From Here.

Less than eight months after the completion of their first double LP, Chicago, now having drop­ped the Transit Authority extension, went back into the studio to make a second one — also a double one, and it took them less than a month to complete it... what can you say, though, about the adrenaline-heavy year of 1969? What is actually most stunning about this situation is that Chicago II is a completely different record from its predecessor, in many respects.

For starters, look at the number of tracks: twenty three, as opposed to a mere twelve on Chicago Transit Authority. Never mind that some are counted as individual «movements» of a larger suite — this is genuinely significant, in that the length of CTA was largely achieved by extended improvisational grooving and jamming, with an extra sonic experiment or two like ʽFree Form Guitarʼ thrown in. On the second album, a radical change of direction has occurred: here, Chicago are already moving away from the realm of «possessed improvisation» and leaning towards a far more calculated and composition-based approach. This means, almost necessarily so, that the record is much more poppy — poppy enough, that is, to ensure the presence of many people in this world who refuse to recognize any Chicago album other than CTA as an actual piece of artistic expression. But, in all honesty, Chicago II is an artistically expressive album, and once one manages to adjust oneself to the relative downplaying of Terry Kath's guitar and the near-complete purging of Cream / Hendrix influences from the band's guidebook, the end result emerges as a compositionally and conceptually stronger statement than CTA, even if it is nowhere near the former's level of kick-ass energy.

For starters, together with the follow-up III, this is one of their most naturally band-like albums: of the seven credited members of the band, four emerge here as accomplished songwriters, as Peter Cetera closes the record with his first songwriting credit, and trombonist James Pankow steps into the limelight as more than the provider of the ʽLiberationʼ jam, but even as a contribu­tor to the band's pool of hit singles. Meanwhile, Lamm and Kath are both on a roll, contributing everything from hook-based pop songs to exercises in easy-going classical music (the ʽMemories Of Loveʼ suite, cowritten by Kath with Barbra Streisand's arranger Peter Matz... okay, not the highest possible recommendation, but I guess Leonard Bernstein just wasn't available). And, like it or not, there is no denying that the guys were on a roll — even if you dislike their sunny style in general, almost every composition here has something to trap your attention.

Actually, it's not that sunny: much of Chicago II is quite bittersweet, and its most hard-hitting and gripping song is the single ʽ25 Or 6 To 4ʼ, whose descending melody bears a distinct simi­larity to ʽWhile My Guitar Gently Weepsʼ — even Kath's guitar solo is very notably Clapton­esque, making the song seem like one last relic of their Cream-inspired beginnings. The lyrics, bawled out by Cetera in exaggerated desperation, deal with the rather mundane problem of experiencing a writer's block around midnight, but just as George Harrison could turn the issue of a floor that needs sweeping into a tragedy of cosmic proportions, so does this song open a chan­nel to some much grander dimension — and the brass section is no slouch, either, echoing each of Cetera's lines with a blast of doomy solemnity. This is still Chicago, not the Beatles or Led Zep (the song has also been compared to ʽBabe I'm Gonna Leave Youʼ for a good reason), so do not expect the utmost depths of human emotion; but in any case, this is the real thing, not some limp simulacre from a bunch of untalented fanboys.

Lamm's yearning for social justice also comes out on the four-movement suite ʽIt Better End Soonʼ: the "let's-all-get-together-and-put-an-end-to-evil" lyrical invocations here collect just about every cliché available to the English language in 1969, but the progressive composition itself is fun, riding a soft funky brass groove that is alternately punctuated by guitar and flute solos. In the end, I think that the whole thing is saved by Cetera's bass work: the suite's «bottom» layer is what gives it the proper grim grittiness to be convincing as a pissed-off outburst, rather than Kath's endless ranting invocations (and it does not exactly help that shouting out "it better end soon my friend" near the conclusion to a 60+ minute album might give the listener a some­what wrong idea of the suite's overall purpose).

On the opposite side of things, there's a couple of completely different suites. Pankow steps for­ward with ʽBallet For A Girl In Buchannonʼ, twelve cutesy minutes of jazz-pop that manage to incorporate two of Chicago's best-known songs: ʽMake Me Smileʼ, which runs from a tense, paranoid, ʽTill The End Of The Dayʼ-like verse melody to a rainbow-colored happy-dappy reso­lution in the chorus — and ʽColour My Worldʼ, the first, and far from the worst, in a series of slow sentimental ballads. Somehow it manages to survive, despite being based on a trivial piano chord progression; maybe it is its totally childlike disarming innocence that makes it endearing rather than cringeworthy, although Kath's vocal performance is an acquired taste (his timbre really gets on my nerves every time he tries to sustain a note for more than half a second). How­ever, do not make the mistake of concentrating exclusively on hit single material: the little inter­ludes that Pankow piles up around the big arias can be just as interesting, or even more so, with lots of unpredictable twists and melodic complexity that rivals any of the upcoming symph-prog heroes (like, replace the brass on ʽWest Virginia Fantasiesʼ with a Steve Howe lead guitar part and you get yourself a ready-made movement for any respectable Yes suite).

Next to this, Kath's little exercise in classical music falls short of the mark; yet at the very least the ʽMemories Of Loveʼ suite actually sounds like a suite, not as «incidental music to a film», which is typically the fate of most of pop artists' attempts to dabble in classical themes. The main vocal theme is fairly corny, though; I'd rather prefer the effort remain completely instrumental than hear Kath act out the feelings of a broken-hearted lover on the grave of his loved one (spoiler: a bad case of over-acting). On the other hand, he does contribute two pretty good pop songs for Side A (ʽThe Roadʼ and ʽIn The Countryʼ), and his main transgression on this album is not so much an overdose of sentimentalism as it is the conscious de-emphasis of his guitar talents, something that is not easy to overlook or forgive, because this is still a pop-rock album, and there is only so much distance to rock'n'roll nirvana that you can cover with brass riffs.

In other words, what this album desperately needed to live up to its predecessor was at least two or more three songs of the caliber of ʽ25 Or 6 To 4ʼ. Without them, Chicago II is largely a pleasing and tasteful listen, but completely lacking the intensity and aggressive passion of its pre­decessor. Naturally, aggressive passion should not be a prerequisite for a masterpiece; but without it, the prevailing mood is sunshine, sunshine, and even more sunshine, until your feathers melt and you start drowning in an ocean of cuddliness. I give the record a thumbs up because it is such an intelligently crafted ocean of cuddliness — revealing a ton more musical ideas than their chief competitors in this business at the time (Blood, Sweat & Tears); but if the seeds of future disasters were only barely noticeable on CTA, Chicago II makes these future disasters seem imminently inavoidable — and the question posed in the final track, ʽWhere Do We Go From Here?ʼ, even though its "we" really means "you, the listeners", takes on an almost prophetically ironic character. Nevertheless, no record should be judged by the perilous road that it has set its creators upon: on its own terms, Chicago II is a masterful self-reinvention and a big bubbly bubble of musical creativity that still sounds fresh and challenging even today.