Supertramp - Sleeping With The Enemy (1985)

Following the massive success of 1978's 'Breakfast In America', which propelled Supertramp into the big time after many, many years of hard slog, the band had the unenviable task of coming up with an album as good as, or preferably better than, their breakthrough record. The hit singles extracted from it - 'The Logical Song', 'Take The Long Way Home', 'Goodbye Stranger', and the title track - set the bar very high, and so to give Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies time to come up with suitable material, the record company released the live album 'Paris' in 1980. Before the two writers even began work on the next record, Hodgson moved his family from Los Angeles to northern California, and began work on a solo album, which put something of a strain on the working relationship of the two men, but they managed to complete the next album, and '...Famous Last Words...' was released in 1982. The difficulties which were  evident during the recording of that record finally caused Hodgson to leave the band, as he wanted to spend more time with his family and work on his solo album, and Davies was left in charge of the group. Three years later 'Brother Where You Bound' was released, containing songs which moved away from the commercial pop success of their late 70's records, and included a sixteen minute exposition on the Cold War, with guitar solos from David Gilmour. Hodgson's solo album had come out the previous year, and to my ears was the better of the two sets, sounding more like Supertramp than the actual Supertramp record. But what if the band hadn't split, and the two writers had brought their best songs to the table for the follow-up to '...Famous Last Words...', with Hogdson's classic Supertramp sound being a counterpoint to Davies' new direction. It's quite possible that the resultant album could have sounded something like this, and even though a lot of these songs are quite long, we are now well into the CD era, so a sixty minute album is not that unusual. 

Track listing

01 Had A Dream (Sleeping With The Enemy)
02 Cannonball
03 Give Me Love, Give Me Life
04 Lovers In The Wind
05 No Inbetween
06 Better Days
07 Only Because Of You
08 Brother Where You Bound


Thanks to Stenn for the idea.