Nickelback
No Fixed Address

And then, well, after a couple of years you feel like listening to Nickelback again. For someone like me who loves prog or generally leans towards something tendentially varied, sophisticated, interesting, particularly well-played, and usually stays away from simpler, bare, and working-class rock, seeing a review of a Nickelback album certainly seems strange. Yet they are a band I listen to with great pleasure despite the full awareness that it is a working-class band. Perhaps what strikes me about them is their ability to find the right compromise between aggression and melody; a band that after their beginnings oriented towards a more or less declared post-grunge shifted to something harder with “The Long Road” and then alternated harder tracks with softer ones in the following three albums. I listened to “The Long Road” a lot in the spring of 2006 because a friend passed it to me, then rediscovered it in 2008 in the pre-graduation period, along with the successor “All the Right Reasons” and the predecessor “Silver Side Up”; I also listened to “Dark Horse” when it came out and then definitively shelved the Canadians; then a couple of months ago, the desire for rediscovery, listening to albums not yet listened to, and a new “love.”

And so here I find myself reviewing their latest work “No Fixed Address.” And I must say that it partially puzzled me. It is indeed a different album from the previous ones. Here, the probably most hated Canadian band in the world wanted to try new things perhaps with the awareness of being hated even more than they already are. This is surprising for the simple fact that the band had hardly ever incorporated elements that deviated from alternative rock/metal, post-grunge, and pop-rock sounds until now. Instead, here you find quite a few things that no one would have ever expected to encounter in a Nickelback album; a somewhat freer album, but nevertheless not a radical change (usually in the melodies you can quite tell it's them).

To start with, the seriously hard Nickelback-style tracks are very few: essentially the first two, “Million Miles an Hour” and “Edge of a Revolution,” and partly also “Get’Em Up” (already more contaminated by particular effects); the melodic part, on the other hand, is represented by “Satellite,” a very radio-friendly pop-rock ballad in the style of “Photograph” but with added female vocals and string inserts, representing the type of composition to which Nickelback has given ample space starting from “All the Right Reasons.”

But now let's get to the surprises… Let's start, for instance, by mentioning the unusual electro-pop of “What Are You Waiting For?” and “Miss You”; the former with more acidic sounds, the latter more sugary, tracks that are honestly quite catchy, projecting Nickelback into pure pop and commercial territory (I am honestly surprised that, at least in Italy, commercial radios no longer broadcast their tracks except for the usual “Photograph,” “Someday,” and “How You Remind Me,” making people believe they have “disappeared”), tracks whose sounds would have deserved more emphasis but instead end up being drowned out by the vocals as often happens in today's pop productions… but the mere idea of proposing something different and unusual along with the heart leads me to give a thumbs up.

Totally far from the spirit of Nickelback is also “She Keeps Me Up”: an unusual funk with lively rhythms, bass lines, and guitar riffs reminiscent of disco music; there's also a female voice here. Two years earlier, Muse was also struck by this funk urge with the track “Panic Station” (the first that came to mind after listening to this track)… with the difference that you would expect it from Muse, as they are known for their eclecticism, but never from Nickelback. A very pre-evening, aperitif track that seems written to warm up the atmosphere before getting into the heart of the evening.

Traces of funk also in “Got Me Runnin’ Round” (especially in the guitars), but here the difference is made by a rap part sung by rapper Flo Rida and especially the unexpected brass section in the chorus.

In “Sister Sin,” on the other hand, they touch on country - thanks to the acoustic guitar parts - probably already touched upon in songs like “Rockstar” and “This Afternoon” but never so blatantly; however, there's also a funky rhythm foundation and even an interlude characterized by handclapping.

Less surprising are the almost cinematic “The Hammer’s Coming Down” (vaguely close to certain Linkin Park) and the more traditional “Make Me Believe Again,” still characterized by new sounds for the group.

Coming to a general evaluation, I express myself by saying that I have generally appreciated this change of direction; those who know me know that I am the first to promote and consider them quite important in a band's career. This does not mean that critiques cannot be made: for example, they could have highlighted and better cared for some elements (especially the imperceptible electronic influences scattered here and there); the impression is that they let themselves be guided a bit too much by the need for radio success (and it's not like they urgently needed it), without which the result would probably have been better. But we can't ask too much from a band that has always been very direct and working-class as well as more or less always accustomed to sailing in the gold of the music business; the evaluation is roughly just above enough, but the level of Nickelback has always been about this, no flop, no leap of quality. Making a sentimental comparison, I could define Nickelback as a “friends with benefits” band: they might not be the band of a lifetime but can sporadically offer you very enjoyable moments… and “No Fixed Address” is one of them!