In the wake of Metal Month (yes I’m still talking about it!) I’ve found myself drifting away generally from heavier music and towards the poppier, more electronic end of the scale, as denoted by my first review following that special. It occurred to me, as I listened to the banality and tedium that was Visage’s latest and greatest (!) album, that it might be an interesting idea or even challenge to go back to the sort of music I used to hate and ridicule when younger and see if there actually is anything there that I missed. Was I just being pig-headed, a dedicated metalhead refusing to listen to any other music? Well no, because I did listen to a lot of artistes who would be considered anything other than metal. I enjoyed some pop music. But the problem with the bigger pop artistes was that all I ever got to experience of them was their singles. This was brought home to me in my review recently of the Pet Shop Boys album. Oh, I hated it (“Actually”) but the point is that I didn’t know that for sure until I had listened to the album all the way through.
My dislike for, and rejection of much new-wave/new romantic/electronic pop music was and is purely based on what I heard in the charts, and on the radio. I never had the interest to delve into their albums --- and at the time, the only real way you could get albums was by buying or borrowing them; no Spotify or even YouTube back then, to see if you liked something before shelling out the cash! --- and perhaps by ignoring these I’ve managed to miss some really good music? Perhaps the singles I heard were not representative of the band, or the singer. It’s often the case: the most commercial, saleable and chartable tracks get chosen for singles, while the ones which are maybe more mature, deeper, less poppy and airplay-worthy get left on the albums, and this can be where the artiste’s greatest work resides.
So over the coming months I’m going to give the music I used to hate a chance. Sort of like the section I did two years ago, when I ran “Stranger in a strange land”. Without the land. Or being a stranger. I may make this into a new series; I haven’t quite decided yet. But I want to kick it off with a look at an electro-pop/new wave icon, for whom I never had much time, and I want to do it in a new
The artiste I want to look at is one whose output I know very little of, but have a passing familiarity with due to the singles he has released. But looking at his career he’s had more than twenty albums over a (so far) more than thirty-year period, so surely somewhere along the way there’s an album I won’t hate? Vain hope perhaps, but then I did love “Are friends electric?” so maybe there’s some chance that I’ll hit a golden nugget, or even a piece of brass in here? To give myself the best chance, I’m taking one from the eighties, one from the nineties and his most recent. I’m even avoiding the obvious, leaving albums like “The pleasure principle” and “Replicas” out of the running. In this way, I hope to gain a better understanding of the man and his music, to at least give him a fair chance before I agree with my younger self that I was right in the first place and should just have stuck with my metal. Sort of.
I, assassin --- Gary Numan --- 1982 (Beggars Banquet)
After his previous album “Dance” had seen him flirt with jazz and dance techniques, it seems Numan went further with the followup. Mind you, he had announced the previous year that he was retiring from live performances, though that would soon change. For “I, assassin” Numan pushed the fretless bass to the forefront, making it the main melody instrument, resulting, apparently, in one funky album! I haven’t heard “Dance” (surprise, surprise!) so I can’t say with any authority how different this one is to that, or indeed to others, and this will be my first actual foray into a Gary Numan album, so it sounds like it could prove to be interesting.
“White boys and heroes” is the first thing I hear, and it’s a slowburner initially, opening with congas and then a low, rising synth line before that fretless bass, in the expert hands of one Pino Palladino, takes over, and then Gary’s voice, which I’ve always found flat, emotionless and cold, comes in. There’s a nice sort of screaming synth line in the chorus which I like, but for me it’s a little too funk-oriented. Not really my thing, but then I was warned. It’s a long track, the longest in fact on the album at just short of six and a half minutes, and I must admit I hear a little of the Thin White Duke in Numan’s delivery. Interesting. I must admit, the fretless bass does get into your soul after a while, and I find myself grooving even despite my intentions. Great bit of sax there at the end really adds to the song, which is, it has to be said, pretty empty, much of it relying on repetition of the chorus line.
Glancing down the tracklist --- fifteen in all --- I note few if any short songs, and “War song”, clocking in at just over five minutes, reminds me of Depeche Mode, but then my experience of electronic/new-wave bands is, as I have already said, sparse to say the least. Nice drum loops in this, and a shot of Duran Duran-ish guitar (like something out of “Girls on film”) but again it’s a little dead, no real heart and I never have and probably never will find Numan an engaging singer. Actually, you know what? Of those fifteen tracks I mentioned seven are additional bonus ones, so I’m not going to include them in the review, which leaves us only eight tracks to get through, two of which we’ve already done. As The Batlord would say, sweet. Again I find “War songs” lacking in ideas, and just fades out on a repetitive instrumental line. There’s an oriental feel to the synth opening of “A dream of Siam” --- well, there would be, wouldn’t there? --- and it’s another six-minuter. But already I like this more, quite a touch of Sylvian and Japan about it, bit of OMD too. Nice sort of birdsong effects, and I wonder if it’s an instrumental. Echoes of “Are friends electric” there in the synth line, and then no, it’s not an instrumental, as Numan comes in with the vocal, though I have to say this time he sounds a lot better. Almost a touch of Peter Gabriel in his voice I feel.
Some effective little piano work then from Roger Mason and that fretless bass is of course all over the track as Palladino sets his musical fingerprints on the music. It’s slower than anything on the album so far, and if I had to choose a favourite track at this point this would be it. The next one up was a hit for him, and “Music for chameleons” (hey there DJ!)
has a nice little thumping piece of percussion and a spooky synth run opening it, again slow, the synth reminding me of the opening from a-ha’s “October”. It picks up a little then on the back of drum machine and the fretless, and this time Numan sounds more like Phil Oakey to me, with echoey solid synth lines that sound like they would be very much at home on an Ultravox album. No, I’m not trying to namecheck every electronic band I can; it’s just how the sound reveals itself to me and who it reminds me of. I must admit I find it hard to believe this was a single, as it has undiscovered album track written all over it. And it’s another that runs for six minutes, though I assume it was cut for the single. Well, I see it wasn’t a huge hit for him but it did get into the top twenty. Just doesn’t sound like single material to me. Oh well, what, after all, do I know about this music?
“This is my house” starts off with the same weird, distorted, descending synth lines that make you think you’re at the ocean’s edge or something, then Palladino’s bass takes it and it becomes a mid-paced track with some nice keyboard lines, but as in most of the tracks here I don’t find that Numan’s voice adds anything to the songs, in fact in many cases it seems to take from them, which is not good considering these are his songs. And again, the song runs out of ideas about halfway through and just stumbles on through its almost five minutes, taking us into the title track, which has a nice line in arpeggios going, Numan even rising to the occasion with a vocal that has some emotion in it, even if it is the emotion of an android. Nobody’s going to understand what I mean, but if you hear the song as opposed to the rest of the album you may get where I’m coming from.
Nothing here is terribly fast, but then perhaps that’s the case in new wave/electronic/call it what you will music, though I surely remember “Just can’t get enough”, “Wishing” and “Sailing on the seven seas”, so I know some of it can be fast-paced. Just nothing here is. So far. For a moment then I think I’m listening to “Killer queen”, what with the fingerclicks and the bass, but it’s “the 1930 rust”, which has a blues feel to it thanks to some harmonica from a gentleman who goes only by the name of “Mike”. Oh yeah, he’s also responsible for the rather cool sax breaks on the album. Speaking of which, here he is on both. Funky in a bluesy way. I like this. Add in some very nice fretless and you have another contender for standout of the album.
The closer then is the other big single, hitting the number nine slot when released, though they halved it for the single. “We take mystery (to bed)” is somewhat more the sort of thing I had expected originally to hear from Numan: big chattering brassy synths allied to other sonorous venerable ones, a jumping bassline and altogether a much more uptempo song, with Gary back to his flat, almost disinterested tone. You can see too where they had not to cut too much fat as the last minute or so is again basically an instrumental fadeout, though it does finish the album well.
TRACKLISTING
1. White boys and heroes
2. War songs
3. A dream of Siam
4. Music for chameleons
5. This is my house
6. I, assassin
7. The 1930s rust
8. We take mystery (to bed)
Well, no huge surprises here. I could say I liked maybe two tracks on the album, but then again this was something of a departure for Numan so perhaps not typical of his musical output. I still think his voice is tediously boring and flat, lacking in emotion and seeming quite disinterested really --- I remember what it sounded like on the track “Warriors”, as if he just didn’t want to be there, so he has not endeared himself to me. However perhaps that will change as we make one giant leap for Trollheart and hop in the TARDIS, moving forward fifteen years to what was his eighteenth album, if you can believe it.
Exile --- Gary Numan --- 1997 (Eagle)
A concept album of sorts, this was Gary having a go at religion, debunking or poking fun at long-held Christian beliefs and postulating the idea that God and the Devil were the same creature. Oh come on Gary! Tom Waits had already put forward this theory seventeen years prior, when he grunted “Don’t you know there ain’t no devil?/ That’s just God when He’s drunk!” So hardly a new idea. Still, it may be an interesting album, so let’s give it a go.
Rather predictably, it opens with a sort of choral vocal like angels singing to God, then the vocal when it comes in is very low-key and restrained, the music the same; gentle percussion, soft synth and quiet guitar as “Dominion day” gets going. There’s certainly more an industrial feel to this, less of the squeaky synth and drum machine, and it’s almost rock in places. Some growling (supposedly demonic) to open “Prophecy”, though again Numan falls into the trap (unless it’s intentional) of mixing mythologies, as the opening line mentions Valhalla. Hmm. A slower, more relaxed piece with actually some quite soothing percussion and again a very laidback vocal, driven mostly on the drum pads.
Yeah, definitely much more an industrial feel to this album, sort of like a darker Depeche Mode or maybe The Sisters of Mercy. Kind of U2-like guitar riff opening “Dead Heaven”, then the vocal is almost a rap of sorts, the first time when Numan’s quirky vocal delivery that annoyed me so much on “I, assassin” comes to the fore. A much more stripped-down band this time, with only two others, a keyboard player and a guitarist, helping Gary out, compared to the six on the other album. Gives the whole thing a sparser, leaner feel, which I think suits the music very well. This song kind of reminds me of Lacuna Coil at times too, then “Dark” is one of the two shortest pieces on the album, its brother the following track, both just barely shading the four and a half minute mark. “Dark” is built on a barebones percussion with low synth almost in the background and Numan again emulating Gabriel as he did on the previous album in this section. As there is no credit for drummer I have to assume that’s a Linn or one of those drum machine things; certainly sounds it, very mechanical and automated.
Rob Harris adds some nice guitar riffs to this, pulling the track somewhat out of its murky, brooding theme and then Numan tries another semi-rap, though in fairness it’s not too bad. I much prefer the way he sings on this album so far, his voice in the lower registers but still high enough in the mix that you can hear it and concentrate on it. “Innocence bleeding” then starts very low-key and muted again, some solid piano work adding to the atmosphere courtesy of Mike Smith and again the thing has a very Peter Gabriel sound, perhaps a bit of early Bowie thrown in.
Nothing on this album has so far been what I would consider uptempo, certainly not pop music. If anything it’s possibly dark electronica (darkwave?) and it’s a lot more palatable than almost anything I listened to on his eighties effort. I get the idea of an artiste growing in maturity and experience, and trying new things, expanding beyond his limited musical boundaries and reaching out to encompass and embrace new influences. Can’t fault the man for that. “The angel wars” has a depressingly obvious title for an album which is primarily concerned with the concepts of good and evil, and it starts off a little more boppy than anything else on the album thus far, but it’s still a far cry from “I, assassin”. A slowly rising, droning vocal gets stronger and more insistent as the song goes on, then although the general theme of the album has been pretty laidback I think “Absolution” comes in as the ballad, with a nice relaxed vocal and a slower, more sedate tempo, some nice soft synth and ticking percussion.
“An alien cure” goes back to the industrial rock we’ve been hearing up to now, with a slight upsurge in the tempo, though not much. Bit more to be heard from Harris’s guitar as it shoulders and shoves its way through the banks of keyboards, though again Numan’s vocal on this one annoys me. The song’s okay but to be honest nothing special, and now we’re at the end. The title track opens with some sound effects and a slow percussion, droning synths and Numan keeping up the annoying vocal inflections that make me dislike him more every time he uses them. But it’s a slow, laidback song and a decent closer, quite eerie if a little kind of empty.
TRACKLISTING
1. Dominion day
2. Prophecy
3. Dead Heaven
4. Dark
5. Innocence bleeding
6. The angel wars
7. Absolution
8. An alien cure
9. Exile
Although I enjoyed this album more than the previous, it’s still failed to imbue in me any desire to check out the rest of his discography. It’s not that it’s a bad album, but to coin a phrase, I just ain’t feelin’ it. It’s the sort of music that leaves me generally cold, untouched and fails to evoke any sort of emotional response in me. I haven’t felt like crying, singing along, learning lyrics or even thinking about the songs in the way my usual music affects me. In other words, a great big meh so far.
And with that cheery thought in mind, let’s move on to the final album in this trilogy of tedium.