Gary Numan - Dance
#408
September 4 1981
Gary Numan
Dance
Genre: Synth-jazz-wave
4.25 out of 5
Highlights:
Night Talk
Cry, the Clock Said
She’s Got Claws
Crash
You Are, You Are
I’ve talked a lot about my affection for Mr. Numan.
It was sparked and is intricately woven with an unrequited crush that defined my mid adolescence.
So, it’s hard for me to be objective when it comes to him and yet, because of that and because, when I was in a car accident, the aforementioned crush came into the store where I worked to say hello and referred to me as “Crash”, which is a play on a title of a song from this record, I decided to take it for myself to see if I felt the same way that I did when I did the Numan Reflecting Pool series over 10 years ago. (Reflecting Pool was the name I gave to catalog retrospectives of bands that I already knew or loved and was reassessing).
Prior to this project knowing that Nash the Slash played violin on “Cry, the Clock Said” would have meant nothing to me. But because of our association with him now I noticed that there’s an improvisational and subversive quality to the playing, and Nash’s playing helps echo the sadness in this end-of-relationship song in a way that, heretofore, I didn’t think was possible for Gary.
Roger Taylor’s drums on “Crash” and “You Are, You Are” are unmistakable as they echo the work and production he was employing on Fun in Space
I love this album but it’s not for everyone. It’s the deep cut Numan. It’s the last good record he will put out for decades. In fact, in relation to the rest of 1981, I like it even better than last time.
Here’s some of that original review:
“I like Dance. I'm one of the few. It's such a departure from the previous albums, where they were cold and distant, Dance is minimalist, melancholic and lamenting. Employing more jazzy rhythms than rock, the first side opens and closes with 9+ minute meditations on prostitution and breakups, respectively.
From what I can tell these songs, or many of them, are built on drum loops even though Cedric Sharpley and Roger Taylor (Yes, THAT Roger Taylor) are credit as drums and percussion. A year after this album Queen would release Hot Space and I know that Taylor was instrumental in pushing the band toward synth drums and keyboards, was he influenced by Numan? Perhaps.
Dance is the record that sparked the downward tumble from the charts for Gary. Well, it had to happen sometime, yes? Here's the thing. What most people never realize about Mr. Webb. (Gary's real surname). He was born in 1958. When the first Tubeway Army record was released he was all of 20. When Dance was released he was 23. Between those 4 years he had already released three seminal New Wave records, unknowingly changed music, and sold millions of albums.
Not too shabby.
All before he was 23.
Listening to Dance with the understanding that the composer/singer is the same age as most people when they get out of college (or just slightly older by a year) it now comes across as a much more mature work and a bold turn away from what was expected of him and what popularized him.
It should have been applauded.
This is a headset record, a moody son of a bitch (at least the first side) and a very rich and rewarding experience. I have to say it's awfully brave to put not one but two long opuses on the first side. Usually those tracks are relegated to the second side after you've captured the audience's attention. Gary Numan outshines his earlier self simply by doing what he wants to do.
Dance is more Tangerine Dream than Kraftwerk and that's just fine with me.
The songs on Side Two are a little more in keeping with the Numan of old. "Crash" could have slid off The Pleasure Principle and, I believe, had it and "She's Got Claws" and "You Are, You Are" opened this album people would have been quicker to embrace it and quicker to embrace the moodier aspects of the rest of it.
The only real letdown is "Boys Like Me" which continues the jazzy motifs of Cry and Slowcar. I imagine that I could do without the song mainly because those other two take up almost 20 minutes of the record and by the time we get to Boys I've got the idea and it's too familiar, too redundant. Other times it works splendidly as on "My Brother's Time", a dirge that appears to be a lamentation on libidinous indifference.
Dance doesn't suck. I think the title isn't referring to the act of dancing but, rather, courtship. And failed ones, at that. On that scale it succeeds.”
https://music.apple.com/us/album/dance/1325734803
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