After successfully toying with a more AOR-oriented sound on
If You Knew Suzi,
Suzi Quatro made a strong return to her hard-rocking roots on 1979's Suzi...And Other Four Letter Words. Although not a full-on hard rock album, this album sports plenty of driving, guitar-oriented tunes. Good examples include the lead-off track "I've Never Been in Love," which effectively juxtaposes rollicking, piano-driven verses in a
Jerry Lee Lewis vein with a chorus full of power chords, and the dazzling "She's in Love with You," a set of instructions on how to court a nice girl set to a double-time backbeat and fueled by insistent guitar riffs. Bracing rockers like these are judiciously balanced with a string of tuneful, keyboard-based mid-tempo tunes: "Hollywood" effectively uses a sweet melody and a light vocal from
Quatro to put across a gritty tale of how the titular city eats up young innocents, and "Four Letter Words" is an amusing put-down of a lying lover set to a pop-inflected reggae groove. The downside of Suzi...And Other Four Letter Words is that its emphasis on a consistent rock feel leads to a very similar sound from song to song (many of the songs recycle the same double-time backbeat), and some of the songs rely a little too heavily on the band's delivery to support them (the melody of "You Are My Lover," which is minimalist to the point of being repetitive). Despite these minor problems, Suzi...And Other Four Letter Words remains a solid slab of rock that is guaranteed to please the
Suzi Quatro fanbase.