"The Hand that Feeds," "Sight For Sore Eyes" & "Milkcow Blues"

As we head through the back half of Draw the Line, we're seeing consistency... not greatness, but at least a uniformity to the tracks. "The Hand that Feeds" is pretty much exactly the type of album track that bolsters this album's reputation is interesting, weird, and yet solid if not great. It's hard and got a bit of swagger (based on a Phantom of the Opera type scale riff) it's menacing and messy and weirdly abrasive.

No this album did not have the level of craft its predecessors did, but it doesn't lack for character. Once you start meeting it halfway you start to appreciate...



And the test for that is "Sight for Sore Eyes." When you can learn to love a dirty-ass funk jam like this, you really appreciate this album for the spectacle it is and what it has to offer. If you didn't know the history of the band - what tensions and tempers were tearing them apart - you'd think this wasn't a case of "running out of gas" as it was just a change of direction. They certainly pursue this sound very thoroughly on this album, and it suits them. It does! Imagine that. It's just that they weren't producing what was expected or desired by the critics. The fans were pretty happy with this whole affair, if I've read right.



And why wouldn't they be? Hell. This cover of an old blues standard (by way of the Kinks) really closes this album out on a strong note. It may not exactly be "Train Kept A Rollin" but they sure cut this one up. It's dirty without being gross (something the band was losing its feel for) and has a hell of a groove. It shows, like "Kings and Queens" in a different way, that when the band could get its shit together and focus, they still had something good.

And as bad as it gets in the next little while - that's something that never quite goes away.

"Bright Light Fright" & "Kings and Queens"

Although I think "Combination" is the better tune, it's hard to argue with the energy of this Joe Perry-led outing. Of course it's one of the best guitar tracks on the album. Of course it's brash and energetic. Of course its lyrics sum up, better than any other song on here (except the title track) the band's state of mind at the time: this time in relatively positive light: it's a pretty awesome ode to a hangover, and Joe was pretty pleased when he came up with that title phrase. He turns in an okay vocal, and it only sounds better when Steven joins in.



As we know by now, every album has at least one or two songs where Steven Tyler's weird fascination with other cultures, time periods, dimensions and ways of thinking comes out to play. It has informed some of the best songs, and is their best weapon when attempting some big elaborate setpiece - their ability to commit and make it work keeps a song like this from being a plodding, pretentious mess.

Between this and "Bright Light Fright," there could not be two more different songs. One is a fast-paced, nearly punky rock jam about the consequences of a night out, the other a highly crafted medieval melodrama. I don't dislike this song, but it's such an oddball on this album, so much more bombastic and elaborate. It's meticulous, where the other songs seem to be "chuck it all in." It sits like a rock in the middle of the album (opening side 2 on vinyl) chucking out the streetrat imagery of the album for proto heavy metal fantasy.

Tom Hamilton is the unsung hero of this album. His name is in the credits more here than any other album, probably because songs were more and more originating from jams between him, Joey Kramer and Brad Whitford - as a result, his bass is often more prominent than the lead guitar, tugging the song along, and on this track being a key instrument in its success.

"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.

"Draw the Line"

So let's kick it off. The first cut of Draw the Line, the title track, establishes the album's MO right away. It's dirty, fast, loud, and doesn't make much sense. And what a riff - Joe Perry once said "It's the simple ones that turn out best." That staccato ramp up, followed by a two-note fall.

The song's a good song, but it's also an indication that the band isn't doing all the same things they did the last time. If Rocks was an album on the brink, Draw the Line is an album in the course of plummeting. But it's exciting, in its way because it never lacks for adrenaline. It did not make for the best music the band ever produced, but it still made for a few damn good songs. Aside from the riff, the song also has some pretty impressive screeching from Steven, and was clearly engineered to sound good live, which was increasingly becoming the band's priority, since they had found their record store audience.

Draw the Line (1977)

Every album Aerosmith recorded is a chapter in the story. They are statements of time an place, charting the band's rise, peak, fall, and re-climb, to rock greatness. So the story goes, what goes up must come down. If you could graph the band's artistic quality, popularity, and emotional health, each point on the timeline marks progress in one direction or another: up or down.

Draw the Line is where that downward trajectory begins, which didn't cease until the late 1980's. In an interview on the documentary "The Making of Pump," bassist Tom Hamilton relates the experience of Aerosmith in the 70's: There was a streak, from 1973 to 1976, where each album was a step up from the last, an improvement, a progression. Draw the Line was the first album they did where they did not feel like they had bettered themselves.

Draw the Line is for sure a different album. I think I can hear frustration setting in... the motivating factors that drove songs like "Last Child" and "Back in the Saddle," as well as "Sick as a Dog" and "Lick and a Promise" have turned oppressive, stifling. There's a street level sloppiness marking this album. The songs feels more jammy and less distinguished. It's either the sound of the band shrinking away from a challenge (and into drugs,) or just trying to fall back on what feels natural. Creatively it's easy to see this album as a disappointment, and yet...

It's not all that unpleasant to listen to in its entirety. There's a lot less lofty reaching (the one track that does aspire to high art seems very out of place.) A lot of the tracks tread the same ground, but in a way that's the album's saving grace because it's at least consistent. It has a dirty up-front-ness to it that none of the previous albums had, showing the band's debt to the New York Dolls a bit. It's a mess, but a very direct one.

There's a thing I sometimes find myself saying at my other blog. As a critic, I know this album is not perfect. I know it's a frustrated, messy album that takes a lot of missteps and isn't nearly as rich of a listening experience as Rocks or Toys. It's flawed. And yet, I still can't stop listening to it. With 9 tracks, not one of them is certifiably bad. Mostly they sit together perfectly well, and carry a charm that a "bad" album shouldn't have. If you're an Aerosmith fan, if you're likely to be reading this blog, you can't write this album off at all. We know this band is capable of so much more, and yet, when you take it all away, if this is what's left, it still works.

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