“Something’s Coming, I Know” was among the first scraps of work product Chicago released prior to the arrival of 2014’s Chicago XXXVI: Now, in a demo form so raw that the horn parts were still represented by keyboards.
They were putting all this to tape in hotels, dressing rooms and borrowed studio space while on tour, recording in lockdown-like isolation then synching the performances via private web portal for final production by Hank Linderman. This was, essentially, the only way a now-far-flung Chicago could belatedly follow up 2006’s Chicago XXX. (“Nobody lives in the same town anymore,” Robert Lamm admitted to the Columbus Dispatch in 2014.)
Lee Loughnane oversaw the compilation of a mobile recording apparatus dubbed the Rig, which they shared communally. Whoever served as the principal songwriter was eventually given a “supervising” producer credit. But Chicago’s initial goals were actually quite modest.
“We sort of agreed that this was not going to be an album,” Lamm added. “This was just going to be recording the songs we want to record in the way we want to record them – not thinking about radio, not thinking about an album and just occasionally maybe dribble them out for people who are interested.”
This new way of doing things brought with it the promise of longer, more musically engaging songs, in the tradition of Chicago’s golden age. Left to their own devices, you could even imagine the band creating subject matter which veered into the issues of the day. Chicago XXXVI: Now ended up boasting a smattering of the first, and even less of the second. More often, there was this: Frothy pop, with Lamm’s “Something’s Coming, I Know” as its inarguable peak.
“My favorite version of Chicago is the original version that recorded Chicago Transit Authority through Chicago XI,” Lamm told the Virginian-Pilot in 2014. “Certainly, we’ve had success with ballads and things like that. When we actually finished this album and let our manager hear the final mixes, he said, ‘Hey, these songs are pretty long – what’s going on here?’ I said, ‘This is a true Chicago album. This is not necessarily the outwardly radio-friendly attempt of albums the ’80s and ’90s.'”
Except, it mostly is. In fact, the worst of Chicago XXXVI: Now is undoubtedly when they try to mimic the instrumental flights of fancy or agitprop attitudes of yesteryear. This LP’s wan, deeply annoying “America” sits well back in the shadow of tough Lamm counterpunches like 1970’s “It Better End Soon.”
Best to focus on “Something’s Coming, I Know,” which sounds like a song co-written with one of the guys from the band America. (It was.) It also sounds like a song co-produced by a guy who previously worked on those bright Yuletide songs with Chicago, or on Lamm’s breezy 2008 solo effort The Bossa Project. (It was.)
The only vague risk involved here is the vocal presence of Loughnane, whose few previous leads included “Song of the Evergreens” from 1974’s Chicago VII, and “Let it Snow!” from 1998’s Chicago XXV. But “Something’s Coming, I Know” isn’t about risks, or first and second movements, or pushing back against forever wars.
Instead, it settles for being this album’s most effortlessly joyous moment.
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