This is where Edwyn Collins' career began, and it’s crazy to think that it’d be another 12 years before he next had a hit (A Girl Like You in 1994). The title track is certainly familiar, a kind of light and poppy infectious piece that’s pretty timeless. Yes, there’s some squelchy synth beats under it, but nothing especially dating about the sound at all. A Million Pleading Faces, written by the band’s Zimbabwean percussionist Zeke Manyika, is a great bit of Afrobeat pop.
This kind of slight pop-fusion continues throughout. Breakfast Time has a reggae feel, but with jangly pop over the top and is quite effective. Hokoyo is another African-flavoured, in this case it's not just the work of Manyika but all of the band get writing credits, as well as somebody with the fantastic name of Zop Cormorant.
And that, I think, is about all I can say for Orange Juice. The World Music fusion makes it more than simple pop music, but at the same time the tracks are largely light and breezy - a lot of fun but nothing deeper than that. And as I've often said in this project, and will say again many times before the end, there's nothing wrong with that. Although I do tend towards the dark or strange end of music, you need the sorbet course, you need a bit of levity, for the contrast.
This probably won’t come through in the release schedule, as I have a considerable buffer, but it took me ages to go through the mere 16 albums of 1982, for some reason. I found the process almost as difficult and traumatic as living through the year itself – nobody ever wished they could go through puberty again, I don’t think.
It’s not that the albums were bad, as such, but there were a lot that weren’t especially to my musical taste and I think I resisted starting them more than I have before. Or there’s some fatigue at the mid-way point. Whatever it was, I kept getting diverted by contemporary music (as I write this it’s the back third of 2025). But, rest assured, the project continues and I aim to give each album as much of a fair chance as I always have.
Onwards to 1983.
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