Todd is God

I Wanna Thank You (For Steppin' Into My Life) - (performed by Dam Funk) Evrybody Flesh and Blood Rise Truth Secret Society Ping Me Earth Mother Skyscraper Party Liquor Blind Smoke Holyland Terra Firma Today One World Future Global Nation Soothe Can We Still Be Friends / I Saw the Light / Hello It's Me Worldwide Epiphany This Island Earth Encore: International Feel Just One Victory

Soothe International Feel & Just One Victory

The Straits Times (Singapore)has an article (behind paywall) 'An Eden where time stands still' on the the music of Ralegh Long stating "his magic-realist ideas are more aligned with those of English originals Nick Drake, early Todd Rundgren and Vashti Bunyan, rather than the more urbane musings of his contemporaries."

First video from the new Todd tour from mrtrips99 on YouTube

Here's a video interview with Todd and Dam Funk. So when did you guys meet ... 'This morning' Classic.

Howard Whitman at Technology Tell  gives the album a thumbs up. He gives us a track by track break down of the album and concludes (correctly in my view) that  " the hits far outweigh the misses." Sam Moore at Drowned in Sound gives the album six out of ten in a review that says "   it’s a credit to Rundgren that he can still make this 20-something listener sit up and take notice" and concludes   " Global isn’t a bad album – it’s just the product of a gifted artist who’s remaining true to the now-dispended-with culture of being able to make a record out of every creative idea he has. "   Lee Zimmerman at Blurt gives the album a three star (out of five) rating and calls it " a welcome return."

So, it's here. The 25 th solo album from Mr Rundgren. Let's start off by saying that Global is a continuation of musical ideas explored on the last album State . The main problem with State (which has good stuff on it) was it felt like the gimmick of adding more EDM into the mix resulted in that often leading and overwhelming the songs, rather than the songs leading the need for the addition of an EDM feel. I think this has been addressed on Global , where (regardless of whether you think it works or not) it's the songs that seem dictate the need for the musical style. This makes Global a much more accessible and ultimately more enjoyable than State . It all kicks off with a Evrybody , a silly, frothy pop song. It's a catchy sing-a-long that is hard not to want to join in with. From there on in we move from straight out EDM ( Global Nation, Flesh and Blood ) a throw back to 80s Utopia and ' So' era Peter Gabriel ( Skyscraper ), some funk pop ( Earth...

Really good interview with Todd in Rock Cellar magazine, where he talks about the album and the current state of music. And Todd doesn't hold back in his dislike for some of pop music's current top artists: "I can’t stand the modern generation of young pop artists pretty much. So your Taylor Swifts and your Katy Perrys, just “neener-neener-neener,” I’d stick my fingers into my ears...so many of these people have no talent. Or they just get produced up the freaking wazoo. And you don’t know whether they actually can do any of the things that they supposedly do." He also talks about the lyrical inspirations of the album including global warming etc "Probably the biggest bane to us dealing with these problems is the human potential for inertia. The fact that people just hate changing – which is the essence of conservatism. Conservatism means to resist change, to hold onto the past for as long as possible.Unfortunately, that past is gone. There is no past to...

Todd was a guest lecturer for a week at the University of Colorado Denver's School of Music, and this was from the concert Thursday evening of that week:

The Park Record has an interview with Todd about the new album and production in general. "It's the reason why I never developed a particular style as a producer. My reputation is that I could take a new artist who wasn't sure of what they wanted or an established artist who had hit a dead end and be able to get something different out of them." There is a really good interview on Songfacts about the new album and some old stuff too, including this on my fav The Psychedelic Furs track: Songfacts: Todd, "Love My Way." Whose idea was the marimbas? Todd: They had a demo of the song, and I don't remember what the instrument was that they were using. It might've been just a guitar. But I happened to have the marimbas in the studio. I happened to have owned a set of marimbas. So I thought, Well, let's see what it sounds like with the marimbas. And it turned out that the little musical theme just sounded perfect with the marimbas, and b...

"Apart from rollicking opener Evrybody, much of this doesn't bear comparison with his 70s pomp." - Scottish Express (10 Apr) "Global sounds more like the work of a teenage bedroom DJ than a 66-year-old veteran with 25 albums under his belt, but this is a poor showcase for a man of his talent and originality." - The Times (10 Apr) "Global" sounds sterile. Even the clever moments simply sound like Rundgren having a good old time with the Garage Band app. The exceptions are the beautiful ballad "Soothe," a yearning-infused piece with a killer melody and pathos-drenched lyrics; and the album-concluding one-two punch of "Skyscraper" (power-pop masquerading as EDM with soul overtones) and "This Island Earth," which would've been at home on Rundgren's far more successful electronic music collection "Liars." - Buffalo News (NY) 12th Apr