Having already made a fine account of themselves on Today, the three members of Galaxie 500 got even better with On Fire, recording another lovely classic of late '80s rock. As with all the band's work, Kramer once again handles the production, the perfect person to bring out Galaxie 500's particular approach. The combination of his continued use of reverb and the sudden, dramatic shifts in the music -- never exploding, just delivering enough of a change -- makes for fine results. Consider "Snowstorm," with Krukowski's soft-then-strong drums and Wareham's liquid solo and how they're placed in the mix, leading without dominating. Yang's vocals became more prominent and her bass work more quietly narcotic than before, while Krukowski adds more heft to his playing without running roughshod over everything, even at the band's loudest. Wareham in contrast more or less continues along, his glazed, haunting voice simply a joy to hear, while adding subtle touches in the arrangements -- acoustic guitar is often prominent -- to contrast his beautifully frazzled soloing. Leadoff track "Blue Thunder" is the most well-known song and deservedly so, another instance of the trio's ability to combine subtle uplift with blissed-out melancholia, building to an inspiring ending. There's more overt variety throughout On Fire, from the more direct loner-in-the-crowd sentiments and musical punch of "Strange" to the Yang-sung "Another Day," a chance for her to shine individually before Wareham joins in at the end. Again, a cover makes a nod to past inspirations, with George Harrison being the songwriter of choice; his "Isn't It a Pity" closes out the album wonderfully, Kramer adding vocals and "cheap organ." Inspired guest appearance -- Ralph Carney, Tom Waits' horn player of choice, adding some great tenor sax to the increasing volume and drive of "Decomposing Trees." Later CD pressings included the bonus tracks from the Blue Thunder EP
"Formed a Band" was such a brilliant first single, and summed up Art Brut's aesthetic so perfectly, that there almost seemed to be no need for more songs from them. Driven by a jagged, ragged guitar riff, it sounded like it was thrown together in ten minutes tops, and had lots of great, quotable lyrics ("I wanna be the boy -- the man -- who writes the song/That makes Israel and Palestine get along"), which were held together and topped off by Alfred Molina look-alike Eddie Argos' speak-singing -- which he informed his listeners wasn't irony, and wasn't rock & roll. Actually, it's both, and there's a lot more of both on Bang Bang Rock & Roll, an album whose title kills and celebrates rock & roll at the same time. "Formed a Band," which appears here in a slightly more polished version than the original Rough Trade single, is still Art Brut's calling card, but the album has plenty of nearly-as-great songs to choose from. Chief among them is "Emily Kane," a plea Argos wrote to find his lost teenage sweetheart. He doesn't just pine for her, though, he wants "school kids on buses singing [her] name." Truly brilliant in its sweet simplicity -- especially on the breakdown, where he lists, to the second, exactly how long it's been since he's seen Emily -- it's an incredibly vivid distillation of how large your first love looms in your memory. On the album's title track, Art Brut return to "Formed a Band"-style, tongue-in-cheek meta-punk: while Argos snarls, "I can't stand the sound of the Velvet Underground!" the backing vocals chime in "White light! White heat!" and a John Cale-like violin screeches in the background. While all this irony could be suffocating, there's a pure, unadulterated joy underneath most of Art Brut's best songs that prevents their witty stance from becoming too clever-clever; the way Argos roars, "I've seen her naked twice!" about his new girlfriend on "Good Weekend" feels entirely genuine. Indeed, a lot of Art Brut's appeal lies in Argos' way with storytelling, whether he's singing about impotence ("Rusted Guns of Milan"), drinking Hennessey with Morrissey ("Moving to L.A."), or indulging his fascinations with Top of the Pops or Italy ("18,000 Lira"). Though it runs out of steam slightly (at least in comparison to the pop art brilliance of the band's best songs) on its second half, Bang Bang Rock & Roll is a terrific debut, and Art Brut are smart, catchy, and fun -- everything you could want in a band, even if they do sound like they formed ten minutes ago. [This edition of Bang Bang Rock & Roll features two CDs and ten bonus track)
Blondie turned to Britain-based pop producer Mike Chapman for their third album, on which they abandoned any pretensions to new wave legitimacy (just in time, given the decline of the style) and emerged as a mainstream, contemporary pop/rock band. But it wasn't just Chapman's influence that made Parallel Lines Blondie's best album; it was also the band's own songwriting, including Deborah Harry, Chris Stein, and Jimmy Destri's "Picture This"; Harry and Stein's disco-styled "Heart of Glass"; and Harry and new bass player Nigel Harrison's "One Way or Another"; plus two contributions from non-band member Jack Lee, "Will Anything Happen?" and "Hanging on the Telephone." Together, they were enough to give Blondie a number one on both sides of the Atlantic with "Heart of Glass" and three more U.K. hits, but what impresses is the album's depth and consistency -- album tracks like "Fade Away and Radiate" and "Just Go Away" are as impressive as the songs pulled for singles. Still, Chapman's contribution is not to be discounted; a producer with a track record full of punchy British pop hits with his former partner Nicky Chinn for Suzi Quatro, Mud, the Sweet, and Smokie, he brought his sense of precise arranging and playing to a band that previously had been quite sloppy in execution, and he did it without sacrificing the group's spirit, particularly Harry's snotty yet sophisticated vocal style. The result is state-of-the-art pop/rock circa 1978, with Harry's tough-girl glamour setting the pattern that would be exploited over the next decade by a host of successors, led by Madonna. (The 2001 reissue adds four bonus tracks, among them a live rendition of T. Rex's "Bang a Gong (Get It On)" and a previously unreleased preliminary version of "Heart of Glass" called "Once I Had a Love (AKA The Disco Song).
Where Pyromania had set the standard for polished, catchy pop-metal, Hysteria only upped the ante. Pyromania's slick, layered Mutt Lange production turned into a painstaking obsession with dense sonic detail on Hysteria, with the result that some critics dismissed the record as a stiff, mechanized pop sellout (perhaps due in part to Rick Allen's new, partially electronic drum kit). But Def Leppard's music had always employed big, anthemic hooks, and few of the pop-metal bands who had hit the charts in the wake of Pyromania could compete with Leppard's sense of craft; certainly none had the pop songwriting savvy to produce seven chart singles from the same album, as the stunningly consistent Hysteria did. Joe Elliott's lyrics owe an obvious debt to his obsession with T. Rex, particularly on the playfully silly anthem "Pour Some Sugar on Me" and the British glam rock tribute "Rocket," while power ballads like "Love Bites" and the title track lack the histrionics or gooey sentimentality of many similar offerings. The strong pop hooks and "perfect"-sounding production of Hysteria may not appeal to die-hard heavy metal fans, but it isn't heavy metal -- it's pop-metal, and arguably the best pop-metal ever recorded. Its blockbuster success helped pave the way for a whole new second wave of hair metal bands, while proving that the late-'80s musical climate could also be very friendly to veteran hard rock acts, a lead many would follow in the next few years.
[Hysteria first saw a Deluxe Edition in 2006, when it was expanded to a double-disc set plumped up by all the live and studio B-sides that came out on singles supporting the album's 1987 release. In terms of sheer size, the record's 30th anniversary reissue trumps it, weighing in at five CDs and two DVDs. Despite that massive size, not everything from the 2006 edition made the cut. The B-sides "I Wanna Be Your Hero" and "Ride into the Sun" are present in the rejiggered versions from 1993's Retro Active, not the originally released flip sides, and a live cover of Alice Cooper's "Elected" is also MIA. Apart from that, the rest of the B-sides from Hysteria are here, along with a BBC Radio Classic Albums documentary and the first-ever audio release of the 1989 home video In the Round, in Your Face, a DVD with promo clips and live performances (including three appearances on Top of the Pops), and a DVD featuring Hysteria's appearance on the Classic Albums TV series to boot. That's a lot of Hysteria, so it's naturally only of interest to die-hard Def Leppard fans, but the astonishing thing is that most of this is top-notch. True, there's nothing truly revelatory here -- all the non-LP songs have been heard, most of the cuts have been easily available -- but the cumulative effect of hearing Hysteria in the studio and on-stage is the realization that Def Leppard were truly firing on all cylinders during the late '80s.]
