Steve Miller Band

The king of comebacks does it again. In 1976, after a car crash and a case of hepatitis derailed his career, the Gangster of Love pulled himself up off the mat and became one of the decade's biggest pop stars. Then, in the early '80s, when new wave dismissed dudes like Miller as arena-rock dinosaurs, he bought a rack of synths and dropped Abracadabra, a platter of '80s party jams that served as the template for any aging rocker, from ZZ Top to Don Henley, looking to get down with the kids.

The essence of good magic is deception, and with the release of this album, Steve Miller
has certainly earned the right to twirl his wand and shout "abracadabra!" Last year's
miserable Circle of Love, a particularly adept bit of magicianly miscalculation, suckered us
into looking in the wrong direction. Now, Miller has reached into his sleeve and pulled
out–presto!–a pretty good album, and his career suddenly seems healthy again.... More >

With longtime bandbuddy Gary Mallaber making like Jeff Barry, Miller fulfills his hippie destiny and turns into the Archies, or really the Monkees, since he did write the title hit himself, and it will probably stand as the biggest pop tune of 1982, by which I definitely don't mean the most quintessential, because this one is blissfully catchy and blissfully simple and blissfully schlocky and blissfully tricky, like the rest of the album only more so. (Grade - B)