It is the follow-up to the previous year's A Wizard, a True Star and features a comparatively heavier reliance on guitar playing and synthesizers.

[5] Once Rundgren was finished with his production duties, he began formulating plans for an improved configuration of Utopia, but first returned to Secret Sound to record the songs that became Todd, which was more material drawing on his hallucinogenic experiences.

[7] This time, he had also formed a fascination with religion and spirituality, reading works by authors such as Helena Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner, and Jiddu Krishnamurti that he had found at an occult book store in Lower Manhattan.

"[8] Compared to Wizard, Todd features synthesizers more heavily, although it still employs Rundgren's usual selection of guitar, piano, and found sounds.

[8] Its musical contents range from Gilbert and Sullivan-style show tunes to fusions of Philadelphia soul and progressive rock.

The Wizard album marked a beginning of new forms of communication — basing my musical ideas on responses other than just purely physical or material.

In the new album, it is more of a discourse in this new language — telling what I’ve discovered with this new attitude — that is, out of directing my attention to things other than material – to other states on consciousness.

[10] During the making of Todd, Rundgren took note of the "fusion jazz sensibility" between session musicians Kevin Ellman (drums) and John Siegler (bass).

"[8] Originally scheduled for release in December 1973, Todd was delayed to the next February due to a vinyl shortage caused by the 1973 oil crisis.

"[21] Creem's Wayne Robbins similarly felt that the record was too esoteric for most listeners, concluding, "I think through all the noise and the occasional overplayfulness in place of composition, Todd has basically found his tongue.

It's an extremely complex and confounding album in terms of both structure and production, and although there may be an unnecessary surplus of wasted space, there's an awful lot of fine material to be found on it.

"[24] Retrospectively, Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote for AllMusic: "These are some major additions to his catalog, but the experiments and the excesses are too tedious to make Todd a necessary listen for anyone but the devoted.

"[18] Nicholas Olivier, writing in The Rough Guide to Rock (2003), was less favorable: "One of the dullest double albums ever made, it covered a Gilbert And Sullivan song alongside a 3000-strong chorus for 'Sons of 1984', and suggested our hero was taking himself far too seriously.

"[25] XTC guitarist Dave Gregory became a lifelong Rundgren fan after hearing "The Last Ride" on BBC Radio.