Informed by the breakup -- both professional and personal -- of Robert Wratten and Annemari Davies, the gossamer Her Handwriting is heartbreakingly delicate and forlorn; few artists bare their souls quite so beautifully as Wratten, and the 14 tracks which make up Trembling Blue Stars' debut rank among his most sublime to date, shards of melancholia made smooth with dreamy guitars and a hint of ambient atmosphere. Crafted in collaboration with ex-Saint Etienne arranger Ian Catt, the album possesses a stately elegance which allows Wratten to dangle on the brink of romantic despair but never allows him or his songs to lose their dignity -- "Abba on the Jukebox" easily captures the evocative grandeur of its title, while other highlights like "For This One" shimmer with breathtaking loveliness. [This edition contains bonus tracks.]
Having arguably perfected their original formula on Belief -- as well as reaching its limitations -- Douglas McCarthy and Bon Harris started to experiment in a variety of different directions on Showtime, resulting in their best album. Keeping all the original D.A.F.-derived tension and approach of the group's earliest days but showing a greater facility for everything from variety in arrangements to more complex lyrics, Showtime doesn't waste a note (it's not even 40 minutes long) and aims for full attack on all fronts. It doesn't hurt that the album is bookended by two of the band's best-ever singles. "Getting Closer" captures an atmosphere of impending, imminent doom better than just about anything outside of prime Killing Joke, while the heavy synth distortion makes the track rock, all without using guitars. The way the song literally revs up alone is worth the listen. Meanwhile, "Fun to Be Had" starts with an understated, almost swinging start before transforming into a total crowd-pleaser, Harris' astonishing ear for brutally effective rhythms welded to McCarthy in full rabble-rousing mode ("You are young/They are old/Control!/Is all they got to Give!"). Elsewhere is one of electronic body music's all-time highlights, "Lightning Man." With Harris adding both oboe and horn samples to the beats, helping to create a demented atmosphere reminiscent of Foetus, McCarthy steers away from his usual slogan approach to create a portrait of a strange, demonic figure (apparently a metaphor for alcohol addiction) preying on others. The off-kilter cabaret influence crops up throughout the album, with worthy examples including "Nobody Knows," a slow bluesy crawl, while "One Man's Burden" in particular is a highlight of Harris' expanding musical reach, with subtle rhythm shifts and orchestrations showing how soft can work for impact just as well as loud
Clock Dva were a strange band in the '80s; not so much for their sounds, which were always somewhat misaligned within the Industrial scene, but for the fact that just when they seemed about to break up, they would release a masterpiece (the same thing would happen during the 1990 reunion, a year in which they would present "Buried Dreams", the hardest and most experimental album of their career, ten years after their debut).
In 1983, following the death of bassist Turner and temporary dispersals into parallel projects, frontman Adi Newton decided to surround himself with a group of new collaborators (including guitarist John Valentine Carruthers and producer/keyboardist Hugh Jones) and effectively reshape the band's sound.
The monolithic Industrial atmospheres of the previous Thirst album disappeared in favor of more accessible music, still nocturnal and urban but decidedly more akin to the British post-punk scene.
Significant novelties in the sound of "Advantage" include an unprecedented taste for more open (at times almost epic) vocals and the presence of more aggressive horn arrangements while drums and drum machines create almost dance-like rhythms against the backdrop of Carruthers' multifaceted guitar distortions.
A sound that constantly enriches itself with progressively different colors, supported by writing capable of capturing multiple nuances, from the most heart-wrenching moments to the more dissonant ones, between solitary pain and ecstatic exaltation.
Instead of empty basements and abandoned factories preyed upon by mutants, the setting this time seems to be the highly romantic one of a large and rainy metropolis. Here, a film noir protagonist roams about in the most classic and dusty of trench coats; the ghosts of detectives with lost souls continuously pass by with their trail of impossible loves, blind dates, and tears lost in the rain.
The sense of threat grows from track to track (or rather, from tale to tale) as Newton's cavernous voice guides us towards hotel rooms that have witnessed indecipherable misdeeds, following the trail of coded messages delivered by fatal blondes while open elevators wait to take us towards some kind of 'eternity'..
Dream Into Action begins with Howard Jones singing "Things Can Only Get Better," a sentiment that only hints at the good vibes touted by the synth pop singer on his second album. On his debut, 1984's Human's Lib, Jones sang about positivity, but this sequel plays like a self-empowerment manifesto, filled with cautionary tales and anthems of hope. "No One Is to Blame," a cavernous ballad of encouragement which was given a hit revision with the assistance of Phil Collins, exemplifies the latter but it doesn't typify the album, which trades in peppy pop tunes of self-actualization, best represented by the chipper hits "Things Can Only Get Better" and "Life in One Day." Synthesizers retain their place in the spotlight but Dream Into Action doesn't feel like a synth pop album, not in the way the sleekly electronic Human's Lib did. Instead, this is a big, bright album that epitomizes the sound of the mainstream in the mid-'80s, a time when computers worked overtime to disguise themselves as human sounds. And that's why Dream Into Action is, in many ways, the apotheosis of Howard Jones' career: he'd yet to drift into softened adult contemporary, and he still had enthusiasm for his hooks, his machines, and his positivity, the very things that distinguished him from the legions of synth poppers in the mid-'80s. [Cherry Red's 2018 Super Deluxe edition of Dream Into Action is filled with rarities, including the early "DIA Farmyard Sessions," extended mixes, and single edits.]
