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Blue is the colour --- The Beautiful South --- 1996 (GO! Disc Records)

The only album I have from this band in my collection, and why? Well, one sunny afternoon the doorbell rang and there was the figure we all dread to see, the door-to-door trader who has such great bargains that he simply can't live with himself if he lets you go without making a sale. I mean, it would be rude! These guys are, as you probably know, should you have the bad judgement or luck to open the door to them, notoriously intransigent and relentless. If you don't buy something they keep dropping the price, pushing, pushing, trying to wear you down. Normally I just make some excuse --- bedclothes? Nah, just bought a whole new set thanks! Perfume? Don't use it mate! --- and eventually, after a decent effort to try not to be impolite, close the door in their face. Nothing says "No sale!" quite as well as a slammed door.

But this once I found myself mildly interested. This guy was selling CDs. Hmm. Mind you, my hopes didn't get up too high: usually when someone's selling CDs door to door they're a) cheap knock-offs and b) chart rubbish. And so they were. Albums I wouldn't take if he had been giving them away. But then I noticed this album in his voluminous bag and I thought, well, you know, I've heard a few singles, they're popular at the moment but still cool enough to be credible: what the hell? Give it a go.

So I didn't really expect too much once I got around to playing the disc (this was back in the nineties, before I ended up downloading far more music than I could ever expect to listen to, and discs being a physical item tended to get played more or less right away) but I was impressed. It didn't make me a fan of theirs, didn't send me scurrying out on a search for their other albums, but it was decent enough that even now I sometimes play it through, forgetting how good it is.

The opener is well known, with its upbeat acoustic guitar intro and Jacqui Abbot's lilting vocal sweetly singing "Don't marry her, fuck me" as it was a hit single for them, one of four from the album. Nice bit of piano and organ with electric guitar then coming in too, and it's a sarcastic, bitter and yet engaging song that had everyone singing the chorus with drunken glee, a tale of the dangers of getting tied down with a wife and two-point-four kids. Another acoustic effort in "Little blue", this time with Paul Heaton taking the vocal, very laidback but with a dark tone underpinning it, and "Mirror" has a more folky feel to it on the guitar, the percussion from Dave Stead helping it along and it sort of presages the big hit "Rotterdam" later. There are some fairly surreal lyrics: "Imagine a mirror bigger/ Than the room it was placed in/ Imagine a rod / That cannot hold the fish." Jacqui takes vocal duties here again and does well with them.

One of the standouts then is next, as with a lovely flowing piano line "Blackbird on the wire" becomes the first real ballad. Heaton sings this one with a soft, crooning voice, accompanied by Damon Butcher on the piano. Butcher is not a part of The Beautiful South, and is credited as an additional musician on the album, but he's indispensable for this track which it completely built on his keyboard melody. Slightly more upbeat then is "The sound of North America" with bitter recrimination in the lyric --- "The sound of North America / Isn't the sound of Christians praying/ It's the sound of shuffling feet/ That don't know where they're staying" --- and some lovely strings programming and horns. Then the inappropriately-titled "Have fun" is a lovely soft mid-paced song with both Abbott and Heaton singing, with sarcasm and irony dripping from every line --- Have fun/ And if you can't have fun/ Have someone else's fun/ Cos someone sure had mine."

You know something? For all the yelling, screeching and cursing punk spat at us, sometimes it's the simple songwriting craft of a normal band that gets the message across more effectively. I mean, what can you say about a line like "I'm the lighthouse-keeper/ To the owner of this shipwrecked heart"? Lovely rising keyboard lines here and more strings, ending on a nice high guitar passage. Superb. Heaton then emulates my hero Tom Waits in the wonderfully sleazy "Liar's bar", doing a passable imitation of the gravel-voiced music icon, even writing a lyric Waits would probably be proud of: "I'm a stand-up comedian/ But I'd sit down if I could/ The world just seems to want/ People like me to stand." Again great piano work from Butcher --- what else would you have in a Waitsesque song? Strangely though this was released as a single. This is never single material: it's a great album track but the record-buying chart-loving sheep would never entertain this.

The final single, and the biggest hit from the album, is of course "Rotterdam (or anywhere)", which hit a chord with pub audiences everywhere with its upbeat, devil-may-care lyric and party atmosphere. Carried mostly on guitar and keys it's a toe-tapper for sure with Jacqui back on vocals. A real jazzy number next, replete with horns and rockabilly guitar, not one of my favourites on the album to be honest. "Foundations" is a short track, the shortest on the album in fact at just over two and a half minutes and coming closest to their previous incarnation the Housemartins. Another ballad, "Artificial flowers" appears to be a very old showtune and the only cover on the album, driven again on Damon Butcher's lonely piano and warbling organ. Sad little song, along the lines of the Little Matchstick Girl. "One god" is led in by Butcher's soft organ and a sort of tripping percussion, with Jacqui back on vocals, joined by Paul later for a rather touching duet as the song reaches its climax.

Another tip of the hat to Waits in the shuffling closer, "Alone", which gives you the definite impression of a man in a shabby overcoat wending his way home under guttering streetlights, clutching a brown paper bag from which he takes another swig before tossing it into the street, not watching where it lands as he attempts to cross the street against the traffic. Thank you, and goodnight. Great little closer to a pretty unexpectedly great album.

TRACKLISTING

1. Don't marry her
2. Little blue
3. Mirror
4. Blackbird on the wire
5. The sound of North America
6. Have fun
7. Liars' bar
8. Rotterdam (or anywhere)
9. Artificial flowers
10. One god
11. Alone

So I suppose in the end I should be more tolerant of those hawkers, shouldn't I? After all, without that interruption to my day and knock at the door I would in all likelihood never have thought of buying this album, and if I remember correctly (which is never a given by any means) I brought it into work and everyone there wanted to hear it or have a copy of it. So being a pirated copy itself, it got replicated several times. How's that for self-propogating?

But then, when an album is this good you really do want to spread it around as much as you can, which is what I did. The difference being, of course, that I took no payment for the copies I made (yer honour!) --- the appreciation of the music by my workmates was all the reward I needed or wanted.

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Introducing the hardline according to Terence Trent D'Arby --- Terence Trent D'Arby --- 1987 (Columbia)


It was only after reviewing this for my "Classic albums" journal that I was made aware of how great an album Terence Trent D'Arby's debut is, and I felt it deserved a full review. Not only that, but this album marked both the introduction of this artist to the scene as well as the highpoint of his career. Spawning four hit singles and crammed with other great tracks, this album is certainly one to treasure, and yet perhaps D'Arby overreached or oversold himself, claiming it to be one of the most important albums of the twentieth century. Arrogance is never taken kindly, even when that arrogance is in part justified. This is a very important album, but to put it up alongside "Sgt Pepper's"? I don't know, Dayyy-vey...

It certainly allowed TTD (I'm going to have to shorten his name to that) to burst onto the scene in the late eighties like a sun being born, and he without question lit up the charts, with massive hits like "If you let me stay" and "Sign your name" kicking the living crap out of the charts. From nowhere he came, this man who used three names, and then to push the stellar analogy a little further, he burned out and imploded, and nothing more was, commercially, heard of him after that. He actually died, in a way, which I will relate at the end of this review. But for now, it's the album we're concerned with, and to be fair, as an r&b/soul effort it's not something I would have expected to have been interested in, and I wasn't, at the time, my head full of Motorhead and Maiden and Genesis and Supertramp. But listening to it now, I can see how it was something very special indeed.

It opens with a sort of African chant in "If you all get to Heaven", with powerful marching synth and clashing drums, and you can hear from the beginning that this man has definitely got talent. His voice soars above the music, much of which he also plays himself, as well as writing virtually every track. Impressive, for a man just starting out on his career, only twenty-five at the time. There's a very ethnic feel to this opener, and it's a powerful start to the album. The next track is of course well known, one of his hit singles. "If you let me stay" starts with a spoken plea for another chance, behind a very seventies soul piano and bass melody before it takes off into an energetic, boppy song that pops along with great enthusiasm. Not a fan, as my regular readers know, of too much brass, but the horns here really work, and the funky guitar really drives the song. Great happy organ from Andy Whitmore, but it's D'Arby's voice that takes control and draws the attention. It's clear this is a man with a bright future ahead of him.

And up next is his biggest hit, the only song on which he collaborates with another songwriter, this being his bass player Sean Oliver. "WIshing well" is as I'm sure you know, not the Free rock standard nor the Wet Wet Wet song, but an original and has a real stark rhythm yet trips along nicely on a whistly synth hook and a squidging bass from Oliver. "I'll never turn my back on you (Father's words)" has a marching stride feel to it, very boogie in its feel and with some shining keyboard work as well as a superb little bassline, but I personally would class it as the weakest of the tracks on this album, which in fairness has very few low points. Another hit single, "Dance little sister" has D'Arby shouting "Get out of your rockin' chair grandma!" and then amending this to the more respectable "Or rather, would you care to dance, grandmother?" Clever. A Kid Creole style rhythm and melody carries the verses on the back of some fine horn work, with a guitar riff pulled from the best of the Belle Stars (and I use the term loosely), but it's when the chorus kicks in that the song really comes to life. No surprise it too was a hit.

There's a fine downbeat song to follow, in "Seven more days", with some sparkling keyboard and great vocal harmonies that almost puts me in mind of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. A cool shuffle then in "Let's go forward", with drum pads and some nice digital piano with synth sound effects. Again recalling much of the seventies soul greats such as Earth, Wind and Fire, Rose Royce and Odyssey. Again, Darby shows himself to be a hell of a singer on this song, and there are some squibbly little keyboard moves that almost get progressive rock at times, if only for a few seconds. The song itself is somewhat repetitive, and also puts me in mind of Sade, but there's something about it that fails to bore me. "Rain" has a great danceable energy about it, with some uptempo guitar and slick little synth lines. With a kind of gospel feel to it it's just one of those songs that cheers you up every time you hear it. Simple, uncomplicated, fun.

Then of course everyone knows the hit single "Sign your name", laidback, soft and gentle with an interesting little line in percussion, drony keyboard utilising an almost eastern style riff that makes you think of things like Cleopatra and the Pyramids, and a hook in the chorus to die for. Lovely. The superb "As yet untitled" though is where TTD really shows what he's capable of, singing the entire thing --- all four and a half minutes of it --- acapella, almost a lament that just tears through you. He's joined, also acapella, by backing singers on the chorus but takes most of the song himself, proving beyond all doubt that he needs no accompaniment or tricks to enhance that special voice of his. He really goes through the gamut of emotions on this, one of the definite standouts on a superb album, and at the end he grins "Meanwhile, on the other side of the world" and launches into a classy cover of Smokey Robinson's "Who's loving you?" that not only blows away the darker influences of the previous tracks and ends the album on a true high, but shows that he's not averse to paying his dues to those who have blazed the trail he follows.

TRACKLISTING

1. If you all get to Heaven
2. If you let me stay
3. Wishing well
4. I'll never turn my back on you (Father's words)
5. Dance little sister
6. Seven more days
7. Let's go forward
8. Rain
9. Sign your name
10. As yet untitled
11. Who's loving you?

After this incredibly impressive album, Terence Trent D'Arby was all set to conquer the world, and that world waited eagerly to see how he would manage to follow up "The hardline". Sadly, he did not. His next album released two years later failed to make the impression the debut had, creeping in around the fringes of the top ten in the UK and not even making the top fifty in the US. There were no hit singles, and why exactly this album did not replicate the success of "Hardline" I don't know; I haven't heard it, but wonder if it was the old "debut-album-too-good" syndrome? Perhaps expectations were too high, or perhaps it was a backlash against TTD's arrogance as to how good his debut album was, and people were just waiting to tear it to pieces. Some day I must listen to "Neither fish nor flesh" and make my own judgements as to whether or not it measured up to this.

At any rate, his next album would take five years to produce, and though received enthusiastically over here, it did not trouble the Billboard charts and the success he had begun to carve in America faded away as people forgot him. It didn't help, I'm sure, that in 1995 he changed his name to Sanandra Maitreya, legally changing it in 2001 and proclaiming that "Terence Trent D'Arby is dead". Sadly, he was, and he never made any sort of a resurgence under his new name, though he did well enough. But before he went, he left us this album to treasure. So if you haven't already, introduce yourself to Terence Trent D'Arby's Hardline: you won't regret it.

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Now, be warned: I usually just throw in a few comments about the entry, how it did and what the song was like, but this time I have a lot more to say. A lot more. And apologies to any fans of Bucks Fizz, mostly for being fans of Bucks Fizz.

The thing that annoys me most about this song is that not only was it a terrible song, with lyrics a two-year-old would blush to write, it bloody won the competition that year! And it was all, I repeat all, about the skirts. The English ABBA? I don't think so: none of these four could play a musical instrument and they certainly couldn't write. They just looked good, and on the back of this success they carved out a really successful career, to my eternal chagrin. They even had one or two decent songs. But this wasn't one of them.

Like Joe Dolce in my recent feature "The Hook", this song relied entirely on the stage show. The girls started off wearing long skirts, and then at a given signal in the lyric the two guys pulled those skirts off to reveal shorter miniskirts underneath, and the crowd went wild. There's no doubt at all in my mind that had that gimmick not been employed, Bucks Fizz would not have won the contest and more than likely would not have gone on to record more songs. It was a shameless attempt at style over substance, and it worked. Everything from the annoying fifties rock and roll tempo to the stupid dance routine and the fact that all four of them were blonde, all speaks to trying to reduce the actual song's importance in the overall performance. Mind you, it was a song that would never have won on its own merits, without the gimmicks.

I mean, listen to some of the lyric: "If you believe a love can hit the top/ You gotta play around" --- what? What is that supposed to mean? And "Don't let your inhibitions take you from behind" was just another chance for a cheap sexual innuendo, though not direct enough to offend the millions of families who had no doubt tuned in. As for the pivotal lines: "Try to look as if you don't care less/ But if you want to see some [Cue skirts being pulled off] more/ Then the rules of the game will let you find/ The one you're looking for." They will? What the **** is that supposed to mean? What's the message here? Play the field but when you're ready to settle down you can find your true love? And just to reinforce that "playing around" idea, the girls constantly moved from one guy to the other, how fickle oh dear.

Yeah, a real low point in Eurovision history, and that's saying something. I suppose at least we can absolve them of the blame for writing the song: step forward, Andy Hill and John Danter, and hang your heads in shame! Still, I suppose winning is everything: certainly was in this case. Jesus, set alongside this our Dana's "All kinds of everything" is even almost forgivable!

Almost.

1981 --- United Kingdom --- "Making your mind up" by Bucks Fizz

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You know, it's unsettling being a Stranger in a Strange Land, especially when that strange land is roamed by boybands. Almost exactly one year ago now, as regular readers will know and may still wake up screaming about --- hey, don't blame me! You signed the disclaimer! --- I ventured warily into the world of saccharine sweet melodies, digital pianos and close vocal harmonies, and set out on a voyage of exploration to see whether there actually was anything to boybands, if they had any decent music or if they were all just empty, vacuous, cynical productions of a record industry that literally manufactures stars. What I found mostly validated my preconcepetions, but rather interestingly, not all of them. Oh, I was far from becoming a fan of Boyzone, N'Sync or Blue, and I wasn't exactly going to be rushing out to buy the new Take That album! But somewhat to my surprise I did find some gems among the rubble and rubbish. Now, don't get me wrong: with a very few exceptions the albums I listened to from the bands I selected --- mostly the big four: Boyzone, Westlife, Backstreet Boys and Take That, with a few others thrown into the mix --- were bland, inoffensive, unoriginal and just plain boring. The kind of music you could, had you a modicum of talent and a little time, write while sitting on the toilet. Some of them even sounded like that was how they had been born.

But the odd album surprised me. Take That's "Beautiful world", for example, or Boyzone's "Brother". These albums showed a little more heart, a little more genuine feeling and regard for the music, like it wasn't just there to provide the guys with third or fourth properties or a fleet of flash cars in the garage of each of those properties. Occasionally --- just occasionally mind you --- a song leaks out of one of these albums and touches the heart, sparks the brain and makes you think that maybe, you know, these heads are musicians after all. Often, usually in fact, these are not hit singles, nor meant to be, so it's a rare glimpse inside a hitmaking machine that for once actually stops churning out the number ones and begins to become self-aware, if only for a short while, taking care with, and even pride in, its music. This is one such song.

Talk me down --- Westlife --- 2009

Now let's not run away with ourselves here! Westlife did not write this song; in fact, looking at the tracklisting, as I may have mentioned when I reviewed it for "Stranger in a Strange Land", none of the songs are written by any members of the band. So I guess it's hard then to give them credit for a better song than usual. But then, that's not what I'm trying to do in this section. I don't care who hates Westlife --- I certainly do --- but the point is that there is the odd song of theirs I can stand, and as I suffered through "Where we are" that dark evening back in September 2012 , I suddenly came to life and pricked my ears up when this song came round.

It's not that it's that great even. It just has a certain honest charm about it. It's not one of their usual love songs --- it's no "Flying without wings" or "Queen of my heart", or even "You raise me up", though that was not their song. Westlife have made something of a career of making other people's hits successful singles for them all over again. But this is generally downbeat, laidback, not at all sugary-sweet and with hardly any mention of "girl" at all. It's also driven on some really lonely piano and acoustic guitar. I like the idea of the singer asking the girl to talk him down, as if he's on a ledge ready to jump (ah, if only! Sorry) and it gets powerful and emotional in the latter sections of the song. It's a great idea in a pretty simple song, and to be honest not sure why it wasn't released as a single, though that album seems to have done really badly, with only one single taken from it, and that --- anyone? --- another cover.

But this I like. Yeah, I know it's Westlife. Just don't tell anyone ok? It'll be our secret...

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