#234
1980 Housekeeping
Crack the Sky
Poptown
Genre: Rock
2.25 out of 5
Lowlight:
White Music
It’s always strange to me when I learn of a band that, not only have I never heard before, I’ve never heard OF before and yet they have released FIFTEEN records in the US and and AND!!! the most recent was just 8 years ago in 2012.
Who are these guys?
I’d do the research but I don’t love the album all that much.
Are they a blues New Wave band? Are they a New Wave prog band? Are they a little of each? Are they The Cars if Robert Palmer was their band leader and the lead singer loved Roger Daltrey too much?
Are they trying to be weird (“Living with the Lights On”’s rampant space keyboards just don’t fit, man)?
And now there are horns.
Ok, they are just so damned annoyingly weird that I had to read up and learn that Rolling Stone listed their 1975 record as the “debut of the year”. Wow. And, in 2015, that record was listed as the 47th best prog rock record of all time.
But this isn’t a prog rock record. In that context it sounds like a band trying to be relevant to a changing sound. And not really able to hang on to the road it’s trying to travel. Or, in the case of “White Music”, like they are taking their cues from the worst impulses of The Tubes. Or, “All American Boy”, which makes me long for mid-70s Sparks.
It’s an album like this that makes me truly no longer wonder why I’ve never heard of Crack the Sky.
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