Foreigner
Foreigner

THE REVIEW

Year of Our Lord 1977. A revolution is underway in the music world. The so-called "intellectual" rock is experiencing a creative drought and is being swallowed by its own excesses. There's a sense of a need for a change of course, which leads to the early sounds of the New Wave and especially to the explosion of the punk phenomenon. But even hard rock is changing its skin and, in contrast to the latter, it's leaning towards melody and sound refinement.

Foreigner follows the path indicated by groups like Boston and Journey, along with whom they lay the foundations for the future AOR. The mastermind of the group is former Spooky Tooth Mick Jones, a decent guitarist and admirable composer, supported by multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald, who was nurtured under the court of the Crimson King. On vocals, the talented Lou Grammatico (he's not the literary brother of Gyro Gearloose), a singer with a wonderful vocal quality, definitely comfortable in higher registers. The music offered by the group is a refined hard rock with captivating melodic openings, still presenting some residues of the seventies sounds. We are far from the formal elegance and polished arrangements of works that will come, but the self-titled debut album is a concentration of class and harmonic sense.

Songs with simple structures, yet versatile, and with a sophisticated radio impact. The guitars alternate between chiseled riffs and inspired phrases, without overdoing it. The equally measured keyboard interventions create a perfect blend, always in pursuit of the right atmosphere. The risk with this genre has always been to fall into repetitiveness, or even worse into banality, but that is absolutely not the case with this record. The formula proves to be successful and the group immediately achieves significant commercial and critical acclaim. The driving rhythm of the single "Feels Like the First Time" is an excellent calling card, which is confirmed by the airy melodies of the subsequent "Cold As Ice". But all ten tracks of the album have their own identity, starting with the progressive echoes of the ballad "Starrider", embellished by the admirable choruses. Foreigner manages to skillfully navigate from heavier tracks like "Long, Long Way from Home" (with McDonald's splendid sax solo here) to the pop-rock of "Woman Oh Woman" and "The Damage is Done".

Despite the band succeeding in improving on the excellent results achieved with this debut in their subsequent releases, I personally continue to consider it their most accomplished work. Certainly, Foreigner will later manage to create a more refined and distinctive sound, enhanced by even more professional arrangements, but without reaching the same compositional freshness and variety. I close with a quote that refers to the band's name and the feeling of freedom that listening to this record leaves me with.

“I love the clouds... the passing clouds... down there... wonderful” from “The Stranger” by Charles Baudelaire