For many, Supertramp is a pop/rock band. It's not even uncommon for a TV show or magazine to refer to the five English guys as "the band of the 80s". A band that released their most important albums between 1974 and 1982.
1974 was the year when "crime of the century" brought Supertramp to light. Before that, the band, led by its two songwriters Roger Hodgson (high voice) and Richard Davies (low voice), had only had a limited audience. So much so that Hodgson says that before this album, it was not uncommon for there to be more people on stage than in the audience at their concerts.
So, what changed between 1971, when their second album (and second flop) was released, and 1974? Hodgson and Davies completely changed their team, notably ousting Richard Palmer-James, future lyricist of King Crimson. For the first time, Supertramp's "dream team" takes off, with notably the remarkable sax John Anthony Helliwell.
In addition, the band launch in "Crime of the Century" all they have to make a kind of last-chance album. Thus, "Asylum" ends with cries of alienation, "If everyone was listening" with all the melancholy of the world. The unclassifiable "Hide in your shell" with its voices coming out of nowhere is full of romantic emotion, and the whole thing ends with the title song, where the guitar and saxophone shout until the last harmonica notes already heard in the first seconds of the record are heard one last time. And there is no lack of energy, with the rocky-jazzy "Bloody well right". And "School", a remarkable and frenetic caricature of the school, five years before Pink Floyd's "The Wall".
The only thing that will make the purists who listen to this album grind their teeth is the jumping hit "Dreamer". But even this FM song, placed in the context of this unspoken concept album, finds its place. There's nothing to reproach "Crime of the Century" with. Only to be taken.