"I Wanna Know Why," "Critical Mass" & "Get It Up"

The bulk of the Draw the Line album is made up of messy, jammy numbers that walk the line between funk and punk. They have the soul and verve of the former while retaining the easygoing looseness of the latter. You'd never call this a punk band (Steven Tyler would be the first to tell you that) but all throughout this piece you get pieces of The New York Dolls (including a track co-written by David Johansen later on) who were the common denominator between Aerosmith and the Ramones. I actually really like a lot of these songs - they're not my favourites but they tend to slip between the cracks of big hits, and when I rediscover them I'm like "Oh yeah, this one!" They have a particular energy to them that is not present on even their best albums.



The word on this album at the time was that they had used up all their best riffs, and you could easily use this track as proof of that, because it's built on a crisp bassline and drumbeat, a sludgy backwards-sounding guitar, Steven Tyler's distant drowned-out vocal, and a melty harmonica. But hey, this song is called "Critical Mass" and it certain feels like it's reached disaster territory, like we are really seeing those "tensions" and "issues" and "chemicals" in the music moreso than we even did before. "Critical Mass" indeed.



There's a simple test for whether an Aerosmith song works, and that's if you find yourself cringing at the lyrics. There's no telling why "Stand in front just shakin' your ass / Take you backstage you can drink from my glass" works and "Grab your ankles everyone / Ain't my way of having fun" doesn't, but it must be the spirit of the song. There are a few moments like that as the discography goes on, where their usual anything-goes spirit seems embarrassing rather than awesomely weird. This isn't to say it's a bad song, but maybe the least appealing example of the album's character.