Prism - Small Change
#238
June 15 1981
Prism
Small Change
Genre: Rock
3.5 out of 5
Highlights:
Don’t Let Him Know
Turn On Your Radar
Heart and Soul
(Not so) Requisite 80s Cover: Jimmy Rodgers “In the Jailhouse Now”. A little overproduced and definitely the second most energetic track on the record. Feels like a song they would’ve done live, like when Queen would to “Tutti Frutti” or “Big Spender”. But Queen wouldn’t commit that to vinyl. The would rip it off, beef it up and make B-Sides out of it, like they did with “I Go Crazy”.
Canada’s rock outfit Prism is back and this is it. The last time we will hear from them in this incarnation. And the album kicks off with some 80s ear candy, written by Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance “Don’t Let Him Know” is a neat little rocker, the kind of programmer you would expect on MTV at the time (Their “Stay” isn’t terrible, either).
From there it gets pretty uneven, though, and at times unctuous (“Stay). “Turn On Your Radar” is basically soft glam rock and “Hole in Paradise” is carbon copy Foreigner. Now, I like Foreigner. I do. I like well written Power Rock. Radio friendly rock gives me the happys. There is a band out of Brooklyn with the terribly unsearchable name, Station, that I really enjoyed for a minute and a half and they were trafficking in this sound, unironically a few years ago. When it works, it works. As on “Heart and Soul”, a song written by Bruce Turgon who would go on to be IN Foreigner, only this sounds more like Loverboy’s “Turn Me Loose”.
Which is also not a bad thing.
This is a perfectly fine record of it’s type. Glad I heard it. Bye, Prism.
