Runt

iTunes Review

An overlooked classic of teenage energy, pop songcraft, and studio ingenuity, Runt was unlike anything else in the heady musical waters of 1970. Carrying over the Anglo-obsessed garage rock of his former group The Nazz and merging it with the idiosyncratic touch that would soon become his hallmark, Runt was the sole property of its author. For his solo debut Todd Rundgren produced, engineered, and played everything save for bass and drums. Fusing the confessional, feminine songcraft of Laura Nyro, the orchestrated pop of Brian Wilson and the volume-up rock’n’roll of the Who, Runt comes straight from the heart of a 22-year-old boy genius who believed wholeheartedly in the power of recorded rock’n’roll. From breezy AM radio anthems (“We Gotta Get You A Woman”) to pop blitzes custom built for vintage hi-fis (“Devil’s Bite,” “Who’s That Man”) Runt delivers thrills at every corner. Rundgren even found time to slip in a few of the tongue-in-cheek studio experiments (the haunting “There Are No Words; the prog-rock send-up “I’m The Clique”) that would become a trademark later in his career. The boyish maestro funneled all his capabilities into the album’s centerpiece, “Baby Let’s Swing/ The Last Thing You Said / Don’t Tie My Hands”: a masterful pop-rock suite that is once at a love letter to Laura Nyro, a climaxing mini rock opera, and the most perfect rush of vintage radio dial rock’n’roll you are ever likely to hear.