Rock Therapy is the fourth studio album by American rockabilly band Stray Cats, released in August 1986 by EMI America. It was produced by Stray Cats. The album reached the No. 122 position on the Billboard 200 chart but failed to chart outside the U.S. Singles released from the album include "I'm a Rocker" and "Reckless". Rock Therapy was released as a reunion album after Setzer's solo effort, The Knife Feels Like Justice, and the trio of Phantom, Rocker and Slick self-titled LP.
Writing for People Weekly, critic Mary Shaughnessy contrasted Rock Therapy with the band members' solo albums predating it. Shaughnessy praised the album for bringing "renewed" vigor and exceeding the trio's separate efforts and specifically highlighted Setzer's guitar work as being more inspired than his own solo album. She praised the production (a group effort) of this album over the previous Stray Cats albums and even against the then-current trend of "high-tech mush" in pop music.[1] The Sun-Sentinel's Kevin Davis wrote in his review that Rock Therapy is a "fun" album filled with "upbeat" songs.[2] On the other hand, the Ottawa Citizen's Evelyn Erskine found that compared to the band's previous work, the album "takes a more serious approach than usual to rockabilly."[3] Greg Quill of the Toronto Star thought it was "probably the best Stray Cats album to date," despite being "recorded spontaneously and almost on a whim."[4] In his review of the 2008 reissue of the album, The News-Press's Mark Marymont thought it was "all great fun and almost the equal of [the band's] first two best-sellers."[5]
^McKittrick, Christopher (October 1, 2024). Howling to the Moonlight on a Hot Summer's Night: The Tale of the Stray Cats. Essex, Connecticut: Backbeat Books. p. 140. ISBN978-1493074822.
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