18% There (Boston, Life, Love & Hope)

One of the remarkable things about Boston's first two albums -- two of the best-selling debut albums in rock history -- was how unfull of bad songs they were.  Rock is a tough genre; wildly fun, but so extremely hard to find albums where every cut is a winner.  Beethoven most rockers aren't.  Thank God; it's not what we're looking for anyway.

Luckily, today's world of streaming music and mp3s means being able to get straight to the lean meat, or at least quickly identify and cut away the fat.  As one of the all time great Rush fans, for example, that's a huge bonus.  A few of those albums from the early '90s?  Eek.  Let's find the one or two good songs and move on.

On Life, Love & Hope -- the sixth Boston studio album -- you can take the first two cuts (18% of the album) and go home.  The eponymous debut album, Don't Look Back or Third Stage this is not.  Now, the first two cuts, "Heaven on Earth" and "Didn't Mean to Fall in Love," are true Boston songs; they're a little electronic sounding to have fit in on the slightly looser first two albums, but they would have fit in perfectly on Third Stage -- and Third Stage was solid work.  It goes downhill from there, though -- and anytime Tom Scholz, who essentially is Boston at this point -- gets involved with sampling or electronica, things are bound to get ugly.  And it does.  Per any Boston album, the mix is amazing:  rounded, textured, deep, bassy.  But the rock band that sounded like Bo Derek looked is gone.  You gotta remember, with Bo it wasn't just about the photograph; it was also about a natural girl who could look right at you and make you say "oh my."  Apparently, she's taken up residency in the Caymans for tax purposes.  (2/10)