Here we are with another iconic Eighties synth-pop album, with a broad (somewhat unintended) theme of love and relationships. The “blue-eyed funk” feel is still ever present with some slap bass typical of the time, although I have to say that the session musician Brad Lang does a marginally better job than band member Mark Lickey he was brought in to replace. Lickey is, however, present on the two big hits Poison Arrow and The Look Of Love, and he’s far from incompetent.
This is something of a producer’s album – Trevor Horn suggesting the change of bass players, and stepping into a role in the Eighties that the likes of Tony Visconti / Brian Eno / Alan Parsons / Bob Ezrin occupied in the Seventies, and George Martin in the Sixties, being as much a part of the album as the musicians. String arrangements by Anne Dudley (who crops up a lot in this list as strings arranger) give the album a sense of scope, and along with the cover image suggest a throwback to the glamour days of Hollywood.
I do wonder what some of these songs would sound like stripped of the early Eighties production values like saxophones and the ubiquitous Linn-M1 drum machine because many of the songs are good but now (to me) have a dated sound. All Of My Heart, for example, has a good pause in the middle eight before Martin Fry explodes out of it, giving perhaps his best vocal on the whole album – the other big single and for me the best track, maybe second best. Like many early Eighties vocalists, his ability feels somewhat masked by the slick production values. He does a nice duet with Tessa White on Date Stamp as well.
The penultimate track, 4 Ever 2 Gether is quite a serious and dramatic one compared to the others, closer to an Echo and the Bunnymen kind of sound with sinister drums and the moody “Speak. No. Evil.” spoken word bit in the middle, before heading back into the galloping beat. This track, unlike the lighter fare before it, forms kind of the climax to the album, followed by a short instrumental version of The Look Of Love.
I ended up listening to this twice because I couldn’t recall many of the songs from my notes alone, but ended up liking it more the second time around. I’m still not entirely sold on synth-pop but this one did have some good tunes on them. A few years back, Rick Astley made a bit of a comeback, and I recall a more acoustic version of Never Gonna Give You Up that made me realise how much Stock, Aitken, and Waterman had done him dirty by their terrible over-production; I kind of feel this about Trevor Horn here, but on the other hand in some cases the big orchestral sound really works. I may come back to this train of thought before the Eighties are over.
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