The end of an era...

Night In The Ruts (1979.) Aerosmith's sixth album.



A commonly-shared opinion amongst fans of Aerosmith is that the group entered somewhat of a downhill slide after releasing their two best overall albums, Toys In The Attic and Rocks. The album that followed, Draw The Line, is considered to be the beginning of that downward slide. Despite having shaken the confidence of some of their long time fans, the group tried to rebound in 1979. Unfortunately, this was one of the group's darkest hours - tensions in the band were rising, and for the recording of the new album, the band even had to use some session guitarists. Read on for my review of Night In The Ruts.



I really think this album (and Draw The Line before it) tend to get a bad rap. NO, they aren't as good as the band's middle two albums from the classic period, but in their own right they're excellent rockers through and through. However, I won't deny that this album, in many ways, does come off seeming like a copy of Draw The Line - both albums feature a very similar, bluesy-hard rock sound. But it's a good sound, still. The only real hit to emerge from this album was a cover of an old Shangri-La's tune, Remember (Walkin' In The Sand.) While the cover tune gets mixed reviews from fans, I think it's a very good track. Other noteworthy songs include No Surprize and Chiquita - two awesome hard rockers that kick the album off. It's a shame they weren't bigger hits! Many of the songs use the same hard rock meets blues rock styling, and for the most part, this works well. The album is concluded with Mia, a rather excellent acoustic ballad that could easily have been a top ten hit, had it been released as a single. In the end this is a very good album, but it doesn't top the early work from the band's glory days.



The Aerosmith albums were remastered and rereleased, but the reissues are very disappointing - the record company didn't do twofer albums were applicable, nor did they do bonus tracks. They have plenty of rare tracks from the Pandora's Box set that would have made fine bonuses, too. Oh, well. This doesn't alter my feelings for the album.



Night In The Ruts was the sixth and last album Aerosmith would release (until their reunion a few short years later.) In many ways the release of this album marked the death of Aerosmith's classic sound (not to say they wouldn't release excellent material in the future, though.) Final verdict? Another album for the die-hards and not so much the casual fans.