Cheap Trick has always been a band defined by their peak, which is unfortunate because it creates such high expectations for them. After making four of the best pop rock albums of all time, people naturally had high hopes for their following albums, of which they released many of varying overall quality. Cheap Trick would never release an album as good as say, their 1977 self-titled debut or Heaven Tonight, but they still wrote some solid songs and had a consistent discography fans and critics took easy shots at because they noticeably weren’t as good as their masterpieces.

Along the way as they continued to record music, a hit song such as “The Flame” would come out to surprise everyone and show Cheap Trick was still capable of making great songs, but rarely did they make an entire album that came close to their almost untouchable glory days.

Decades later, Rockford is one of those albums, and is quite a pleasant surprise.

This album is a must-have for Cheap Trick fans, and shouldn’t be ignored. There’s representations of everything Cheap Trick has been good at over the years: straight-up power pop rockers (“Perfect Stranger”) or slow harmonic ballads (“If It Takes a Lifetime”). The melodies are incredibly strong and will be stuck in your head for a very long time after hearing this album.

Every song here is solid. As a Trick fan, I have but one complaint—it’s too upbeat. Maybe I overlooked some of the lyrics, but Cheap Trick is a band known for their dark, humorous subject matter. Here, every song seems very energetic and the lyrics often representative of falling in innocent love. No strings attached. The lyrics may be straight-forward and the songs on the sappy side, but they are catchy and fun to listen to, and that’s what Cheap Trick is mainly about. They’re a pop rock band.

On that note, Rockford is definitely the best album worth checking out since Dream Police (I would argue it’s even better than Dream Police, but I’d be called a heretic). Also worth checking out are Woke Up With a Monster and Special One.

There are always the head-shakers, the strain-faced cynics who will insist that this is yet another “garbage” album released by a band that was once one of the kings of rock and roll, but they’d just be labelled as bitter by anyone who takes a second to notice the obvious talent on display in Rockford. Cheap Trick prove here that their best music isn’t—nor was it ever—always behind them.