#10
January 13 1984
Tom Robinson Band
War Baby (Hope and Glory)
2 out of 5
Remember Dana Carvey’s “Choppin’ Broccoli” skit? To me, that is embodied in “Cabin Boy”, a song filled with “Let’s show what we can do!” bullshit noodling that all it does is highlight the insipidness of the lyric “I wanna be your cabin boy all night!” Ugh.
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a record that wanted to sound like Peter Gabriel as hard as this one does. Thing is, at times it sounds like where Peter was going to go in a couple years so…chicken and the egg. Did Robinson build on what Peter was doing and take it to this place only to be usurped by the more radio friendly So in 86? Or was it just alchemy? Was So a natural progression for Gabriel building on his own sound and the tropes being practiced by the likes of Duran Duran and Tears for Fears, et al?
None of that really matters. I’m just trying to get through this perplexing and plodding New Romantic rock version of “Ricky Don’t Lose that Number” and the rest of this perfectly fine but unexciting record. What’s funny is that it’s the title track that sounds like it’s biting on Steely Dan more than the cover. So, Tom is influenced enough by them to a) cover them and b) ape their sound on another track.
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