Trollheart

Count three and pray --- Berlin --- 1986 (Geffen)


Yeah, there I was, back in the heady eighties, when I had a job, a full head of hair and a fuller wallet, and not all that much to spend it on, at age 23. No girlfriend (ah, through choice, through choice!), didn't drink or smoke and no real bills to worry about, as me ma took care of all that once I gave her her allowance from my wages. Oh yes, life was good! So what to spend money on? Why, music of course! And having been to see Tom Cruise's flag-waving nonsense Top gun, and with Berlin's “Take my breath away” riding high in the charts (remember that video with herself standing on the wing of a fighter?), sure I had to check out their album!

So, another band whose name did not give any clue as to where they came from: in the same way that Europe were not Europeans, Texas were from Scotland, Asia from America and America …. well, okay, America were Americans. But Berlin were most certainly not Germans, that was for sure. They actually hail from LA, wouldya believe?

A little surprised, maybe, to find that the gooey ballad was not at all what this band were all about, I listened as the first track pounded its way out of my speakers. “Will I ever understand you” throws down the marker from the off, with thumping drums, screeching guitar and did that voice really sing on the number one hit single?. Vocalist Terri Nunn sounds much raunchier, angrier and trashier than she ever did on “Take my breath away”, with the band adding backing vocals in a very punk-type way. It's a great track though, and a good start to the album. Rockin', for sure.

It's soon abundantly clear that, despite their smoocheroonie hit, Berlin are no Air Supply. Next track, “You don't know” starts off with spacey synth and guitar, before slow drums appraoch and a really nice bassline brings the song to life. In ways, this is a ballad, but it's a powerful one, and very catchy too. The message in it though is different to that of most ballads, as Terri sings ”If I walked away and left you there/ Would you know why?” Some nice programmed sequencing adds to this track's appeal, then we're back rocking with “Like flames”, introduced on cheerful whistles and then exploding into a rock/pop masterpiece with a great hook. Excellent guitar work from Ric Olsen, with nice keyboards from Matt Reid.

One thing that quickly becomes evident about Berlin is that their music is, almost to a track, catchy and memorable, with great melodies and hooks, and Terri herself is a powerful and passionate singer, and indeed, through songs like this and “Heartstrings”, which is up next, you begin to see the raw power she has in her voice, which she was able to inject into what could have been a very limp ballad, but instead comes across as one of the true power ballads of the eighties. “Heartstrings” indeed has a sort of Duran Duran-like guitar vibe, and then it's thatsong, which let's be honest, requires no coverage from me. If you don't know, or haven't heard “Take my breath away” at least once, then you're unlikely to be reading this, as you haven't yet discovered the Internet, or even computers.

“Trash” is throwaway fun, with its feedback guitar opening and Terri doing her best Debbie Harry, and there's a sharp edge to “When love goes to war”, with some nice backing vocals, but it's not until the magnificent “Hideaway” that we truly see Berlin at their best. A tender love song, played mostly against a jangling guitar, it's Terri at her most soulful and vulnerable as she sings ”Forget the pain/ Hideaway in my arms/ Where's the shame/ Cry away, there's no harm.” The song is a great vehicle for Terri's impassioned vocal, the instumentation mostly stripped-back, except for a great guitar solo from Ric halfway through and another, better one to fade out the song to its close.

The production on the album is perfect, handled as it is between the band themselves and two mega-producers, Bob Ezrin and Giorgio Moroder, the latter of which co-wrote “Take my breath away” for Berlin. Everything is crystal clear, nothing lost in the mix, the vocals are never subsumed and the overall impression is of clean, clear, professional production, as you would expect with such heavyweights involved.

It's interesting that the only song on which Terri and Ric collaborate turns out to be one of the very best on the album. Closing the album perfectly, “Pink and velvet” is another ballad, with dramatic keyboard and heavy drums, almost nineties Genesis-like, nice piano and Ric shining as he does his best Gilmour impression, providing a gorgeous musical backdrop against which Terri sings her song of love and seduction, showing her tender side as the album comes to a triumphant close.

TRACKLISTING

1. Will I ever understand you?
2. You don't know
3. Like flames
4. Heartstrings
5. Take my breath away
6. Trash
7. When love goes to war
8. Hideaway
9. Sex me, talk me
10. Pink and velvet

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jackhammer

A great review and despite the horrible Take My Breath Away track it is a really great Pop Rock album.

I originally bought it on cassette for one reason. It IS David Gilmour on the track Pink and Velvet and not a poor imitation from Ric. As I am a Gilmour fanboy I will give anything a listen he is on.

Also Europe were from Sweden so their name is apt and Asia were a British band too!

Heartstrings and When Love Goes To War are my favourite tracks. Pink and Velvet is also damn good.

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Trollheart

Thx for the comments Jack, and am I surprised to find that WAS Gilmour on that track! Guess I should check my album liner notes more, but I only have this one on vinyl, and as I haven't fed the three-headed dog that guards my album collection on vinyl, I didn't want to take the chance and go rooting for it! Thanks for clearing that up though.

As for Europe, well yeah, they were from Sweden but [pedant] Sweden isn't part of the European Union (it's part of Scandinavia)[/pedant] so I'll stand by that one. As for Asia, what did I say they were? American? Oops! But they still weren't Asian!

Glad you enjoyed the review: keep the comments comin'!

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Trollheart

Random Track of the Day
Wednesday, August 3 2011

Just to show how hit-and-miss this random selection can be, here we have a very obscure track from an even more obscure album (so obscure it appears now to be deleted!) from a relatively obscure-to-most artist. Gandalf is the name taken by Austrian composer and musician Heinz Strobl, who has released over the course of almost three decades a total of over thirty albums, all of which are instrumental and of the “new-age” bent, like Michael Nyman or Eddie Hardin. I guess you could call him the Austrian Vangelis, though Gandalf tends to go for less electronic and more organic music, and takes his inspiration from nature and the world around him.

Admittedly, his music can be hard (read, boring) to listen to for a full album, but some of it is really quite lovely. The Random Track of the Day today comes from an album he recorded called “Labyrinth”, and though it says it's a soundtrack from the film, I must assume it's not the Labyrinth --- you remember the one, with David Bowie and the goblins? --- as that movie was out in 1986, already has a soundtrack (courtesy of the Thin White Duke), and this one was released in 1990, four years later.

Anyway, whatever film it refers to, this is Gandalf and a track called “Facing the demons”. Have a listen, see what you think.
Facing the demons --- Gandalf --- from the “Labyrinth” film soundtrack on Seagull

(Not surprisingly, I couldn't find a video for this on YT, so I had to throw something together myself and upload it. Don't expect much...)
First of all, don't ramp up your volume, thinking there's nothing there, as the track fades in very slowly and quietly and takes a little time to get going. If you're really impatient, you can start hearing clear music at about the 1:20 point.

Yeah, it sort of sounds like someone tightening a ratchet in the background, doesn't it? Nice keyboard work as ever though, gentle and dreamy, as most of Gandalf's work is. Some proper keyboards coming in on the 3:18 mark, as the track gets a little more distinct, then what sounds like guitar and strings. Kind of gets going just a little then fades out again.

Well, that's Gandalf for you: an acquired taste, certainly. A track like that one though is probably hardly likely to whet your appetite for more, but hey, that's where the chips fall. I don't pick 'em, I only post 'em.

Hopefully something a bit more mainstream or interesting tomorrow...

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Trollheart

The seeds of love --- Tears For Fears --- 1989 (Fontana)


I was never a huge TFF fan: in the early eighties I found their particular brand of electronic pop/new-wave music soulless, empty and cold. Age changes opinion, and although I would still not class myself as a follower of theirs, I can now listen to “Tears roll down”, the greatest hits package, and like most if not all of the tracks on it. This album, however, marked a pretty fundamental shift away from synth-pop for the band, and they began to experiment with jazz, blues and outright rock. “The seeds of love” was still poppy enough though to be accessible by their legion of fans, who had grown up on the likes of “Pale shelter” and “Mad world”, and while it did not yield such hugely successful singles as the previous “Songs from the big chair”, it still went to number one and was highly acclaimed by critics.

There are only eight tracks on this album, but most of them are quite long, few under six minutes and one is over eight. It kicks off with “Woman in chains”, a slow, stately affair decrying the lack of equality between men and women in today's society: I”It's a world gone crazy/ Keeps women in chains.” Curt Smith and Roland Orzabel --- who ARE Tears For Fears --- are joined on this opener by Oleta Adams, who would go on to have a very successful recording career herself. The song is carried on jangling guitar and synth, with powerful drums provided by none other than Phil Collins. Halfway through the electric guitar kicks in in no uncertain fashion and the song gets a little heavier.

On lead vocals, Roland Orzabal is on top form, and this is nowhere more in evidence than in the next track, the longest at just over eight and a half minutes. “Badman's song” opens with jazzy, tricky piano with trumpet and takes on a somewhat gospel-like feel as it relates the confession of a man deemed a desperado and a “bad man”. The jazz influences are very prevalent here, especially in the piano and bass part about halfway through. The song changes though, going from reasonably fast to a slow blues vibe before picking up speed again to the end.

The title track is a nod back to the Beatles circa “Yellow Submarine”, with its multi-tracked vocals and psychedelic sound and somewhat nonsense lyrics, rolling drums and trumpets. The album sleeve reflects this too, in a pretty hippy-style drawing. Guitar takes something of a backseat here to brass and keyboards, but comes back into its own for “Advice for the young at heart”, perhaps the most commerical track on the album, and one of the four singles to be released from it. A faster, poppier track than those which had gone before, it's also one of the two shortest, at just over four and a half minutes long. In addition, it's the only one on the album on which Curt Smith takes lead vocals. It skips along on a nice piano and guitar melody, sort of mid-paced (haven't used that expression for a while now!), very catchy. Nice guitar solo too, the first to be heard on the album.

In contrast, “Standing on the corner of the third world” is much slower, almost ambient, with the instrumentation kept intentionally sparse until brass blasts in and the backing vocals lift the song, accompanied by shivering harmonica and ending on a jazzy, dissonant fade. “Swords and knives” maintains the slow pace, piano and organ the vehicle for the tune for the opening of the track, which then sparks into life halfway and becomes quite a rocky tune, guitar and keyboard and thumping drums fading out at the end, when it slows right down again.

The penultimate track, “Year of the knife”, is recorded as if live, but I doubt it is. It knocks things up a gear or two, getting quite frenetic in places, and is the second-longest on the album at just under seven minutes. Great backing vocals give the song real heart, with the drums pounding the beat away and driving the piece onwards. It's the last fast track, and fades directly into the powerful yet undestated closer, “Famous last words”, with its almost muttered vocal and beautiful string arrangement (probably thanks to that Fairlight controller Roland is using) and touching lyric: ”As the day meets the night/ We will sit by candlelight/ We will march, we will sing/ When the saints go marching in/ And we will carry war no more.” There's a powerful explosion of instruments in the middle, an impassioned vocal from Roland, and then it all fades away very quietly, finishing the album very nicely.

“The seeds of love” is another one of those often rare albums that I can listen to all the way through without skipping a track, or at least, without wanting to. Every track on it is gold, and as a cohesive whole it really is excellent. Even if you're not into TFF --- like me --- it's a damn good album, and worth a listen.

TRACKLISTING

1. Woman in chains
2. Badman's song
3. Sowing the seeds of love
4. Advice for the young at heart
5. Standing on the corner of the third world
6. Swords and knives
7. Year of the knife
8. Famous last words.

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