The opening track of Riviera, Big Head Todd and the Monsters’ Sixth Album, is sure to strengthen the notion that it’s not front man Todd Park Mohr’s Knopfler like guitar heroics that power the band, rather it’s his soulful blues singing.  This is an opinion that was bordering on cliché a decade ago when Big Head Todd was at their height of popularity.  Of course, At the time no one knew that the band popularity was at its peak:  It looked liked the years of constant touring the college circuit in a dilapidated conversion van were about to yield huge dividends:  The Album Sister Sweetly managed to stay on the charts for over a year and its hit single “Bittersweet” had become an instant classic. But ten years and two disappointing albums have freed the band from any expectations save to perpetually tour for a loyal ex-frat fan base.

This lack of expectation makes the invigorating Riviera, and its sultry follow-up album Crimes of Passion, that much sweeter.   Neither album goes anywhere that Todd hadn’t been before, but the surprise in their ability to succeed where past efforts have failed.     While some Critics will note that neither album contains a “Bittersweet” on it, they may fail to notice that both are the bands' most complete.  Rivera’s single “Again and Again” has many of the same elements as earlier hits. It contains a smooth delivery paired with a simple, catchy and repeatable chorus, “I want to leave you again and again, but I don’t want to leave you Again”. 

However, this time around the band has forsaken extended length songs to instead establish a momentum that makes these albums more listenable than any of their predecessors. This restraint, which works so well on Riviera, suffocated Strategem, the album that was supposed to build upon the success of Sister Sweetly.   Meanwhile, robust numbers like “Secret Mission” and “Runaway train” and “Come On” lay to rest Todd’s own fear that the three-piece band needed help filling up the stage, a concern that seemed to have led to the clumsy amalgamation of keyboards and backup singers that was their fifth album “Beautiful World”.  The differentiating ingredient in the latter two albums, insofar as it’s not simply ‘better songs’, is a laid back approach.  This mood is evident in Riviera’s second track, Freedom Fighter, which contains this swipe at activism chic:

 “The world has come undone, yeah whatever, dang chains look good on you”. 

Riviera stays the assumed demise of Big Head Todd and the Monsters by correcting the mistakes of Strategem and Beautiful World.   Crimes of Passion continues the redemptive trend by successfully traversing blues, funk, R&B, classic rock, and folk of Beautiful World, this time without sacrificing their honest three-man rock sensibilities.   All of this put Big Head Todd and the Monsters in the enviable position of having survived an artistic malaise to arrive at their artistic peak after 15 years of recording music.  Courage, REM and U2.