A Good Effort by Chicago

Review Score: (6/10)
"Chicago 13" is sometimes referred to as the band's "disco album".
True, the disc, originally released in 1979 at the height of the disco era finds Chicago dipping into the disco idiom. However, aside from the opener, "Street Player", none of the album's other tracks have anything resembling a disco groove.
"Street Player" is really a great tune and should not be boxed into the term, "disco". The track features some excellent percussion tracks (with jazz artist Airto guest starring) and a hot trumpet solo (with jazz artist Maynard Ferguson also guest starring). Trombonist Jimmy Pankow's horn chart on "Street Player" stands as one of his best works as well on this tune written by drummer Danny Seraphine.
There are some excellent songs on "Chicago 13" including Bobby Lamm's snappy "Reruns", the uptempo latin-styled "Life is What It Is" (written by percussionist Laudir De Oliveira) and Jimmy Pankow's "Runaway".
The only problem with this recording is the production value. Following in the footsteps of 1978's "Hot Streets" (the band's first album without guitarist and founding member Terry Kath), the approach of producer Phil Ramone to recording this American superband just doesn't click. Like he did on "Hot Streets", Ramone again uses a lot of reverb on the recorded tracks, making the overall sound very thin. Also, the vocals do not involve a lot of harmony arrangement, thus, the classic Chicago vocal sound, so beautifully evident in their first nine studio recordings (produced by James William Guercio) is sorely missing.
"Chicago 13" is still a good album with a great deal of melody permeating the songwriting as we had come to expect from the group over the years. The performances are solid and the horns are in fine form.
The bonus track on this 2003 re-issue is the club mix of "Street Player", which is pretty cool.
A worthwhile purchase.

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