Yeah well we'll agree to disagree I guess. The problem for me with
Abacab was the unexpected-ness of it. Up to then, the boys had been tooling along fine -
ATTW3, Duke - I mean, as I've mentioned fumpty times, the days of their prog rock godhood were long gone, but to use a phrase from the TV series
Yes Minister, they were doing all right. Then came
Abacab. Like they took a giant pop turd right in front of me. Such a shock. It does have its okay points, don't get me wrong - "Me and Sarah Jane", "Like it or Not", "Dodo/Lurker", even the title track, to some extent - but compare it to
Duke and you can see how suddenly and alarmingly the quality of the music dipped.
As for this one, well, yes it is bad, but at least we had been "prepared" by the previous few, including
Invisible Touch and the self-titled. Let's be honest: we weren't expecting it to be great, were we? Expectations were low. Which is why I can sort of excuse it, at least more than I can
Abacab, which just grates on me because it changed their sound so dramatically.
You're definitely wrong about "Congo" though.
