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How long can a band get away with making the same album? If the band happens to be AC/DC, the answer is, 33 years and counting.
With the release of Black Ice (Columbia) on Monday, their first album in eight years and 15th studio release in a career that stretches back to 1975, the quintet makes no attempt to alter anything about its approach. It could be argued that AC/DC has not only made the same album 15 times, but the same song.

In keeping with their old-school approach, the band is refusing to make the album available as a digital download. CDs of the album will be available only through Wal-Mart and the bands Web site. A world tour begins at the end of the month, including concerts Oct. 30 and Nov. 1 at the Allstate Arena in northwest suburban Rosemont.

The only thing AC/DC hates more than digital downloads are ballads. They do not exist in the AC/DC universe. Neither do ideas nor instruments popularized after about 1964. The tempos may change slightly and the lyrics may change even more slightly as they address the same three topics (sex, violence, rock n roll), but the formula is essentially the same: clarion guitar riffs, massive kick drums, and stadium-filling choruses shouted by what sounds like a drunken mob of soccer fans.

Other bands have made a career out of essentially recycling the same album, from the Ramones to the Cocteau Twins, but none has done it as successfully as AC/DC. The band, which originated in Australia and now has members living on three continents, has sold 200 million albums worldwide, including 42 million alone of Back in Black, the 1980 release that remains its most iconic.

Back in Black is Ground Zero for AC/DC fans because it had bigger hooks and cleaner sound, thanks in large measure to the meticulous but unfussy production of Robert John Mutt Lange, the future husband (now divorced) of country-pop singer Shania Twain.

Black Ice tries to duplicate that approach, with producer Brendan OBrien cribbing from the Lange handbook. No frills, no fuss, no big ideas. Just wall-crumbling sound, with lots of air around the instruments so they sound like anvils dropping from the sky.

The Spartan arrangements come in three servings. There is the guitar riff followed by an elemental drum beat that introduces Rock N Roll Train. Then there is the drum beat followed by the guitar riff that ushers in Skies on Fire. Finally, there is the radical touch of having the drum beat and the guitar start off in unison to kick off Big Jack.

Each of the songs leaves lots of space for listeners to luxuriate in the inner dynamics of a flash-free rhythm section: the precision thud of Phil Rudds drums, the blood-gorged pulse of Cliff Williams bass, the strut and stutter of Malcolm Youngs guitar. The songs swing because Malcolm Young makes it so; like Keith Richards, he never overplays, prodding the music forward by jabbing in and out, finally goading his brother Angus Young into another terse spasm of a guitar solo.

The songs inevitably build to a big payoff chorus, several involving the words Rock N Roll (on three songs) or Rocking (on another). Vocalist Brian Johnson exists not to think, philosophize or confess his shortcomings to the world, but to scream his lungs out.

Angus Young, who wears schoolboy knickers and a beanie on stage, is less a showoff on record than a hardcore student of Chicago blues. One of the few new moves flashed on the album is Youngs slide-guitar playing on Stormy May Day. Otherwise, he plays with the economy of Hubert Sumlin, and compresses the florid expressiveness of Buddy Guy into eight-bar solos.

The only surprise occurs on Smash N Grab, when OBrien spritzes the pre-chorus with an uncharacteristic pop touch: strings. Its fairly unobtrusive, but in AC/DCs self-contained world it comes as a shock. On the very next song, Spoilin for a Fight, the band pares back as if to reassure fans that the strings were only the briefest of experiments. In this celebration of guitar architecture, the Young brothers weave counterpoint, unison and call-and-response lines with casual mastery. Its a great sound; if its guitar-bass-drums minimalism you want, this is your band.

If theres a flaw, its that Black Ice feels overstuffed. The band refuses to make its songs available as individual downloads on-line, and swears by the integrity of its albums. But Back in Black and Highway to Hell, the bands best albums, succeeded because they were like a tightly balled fist: filler-free, 10-song, 40-minute missiles. By comparison, Black Ice spreads 15 songs over 55 minutes, and by the end it starts to feel like we really have heard that one great song one time too many.

After all, AC/DCs staying power is based not just on doing one thing very well, but on knowing when to leave it alone.

greg@gregkot.com

http://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.c...ecycles-c.html

-- Edited by twain2country at 13:48, 2008-10-16