The Vapors - Magnets
#520
By Tom Mott
December 15 1981
The Vapors
Magnets
Genre: Dissonant New Wave Power Pop
Allen’s Rating: 4 out of 5
Tom’s Rating: 4 out of 5
Highlights:
Jimmie Jones
Spiders
Civic Hall
Johnny's in Love Again
I love The Vapor's first album "New Clear Days." I never listened to this one--it pretty much disappeared when it released--but when I was gushing about their first album to my best friend from childhood, he mentioned "You know, their second album is fantastic too."
My friend has good taste. His pronouncement is to be taken seriously.
The Vapors' Magnets has a whiff a bit of "sophomore slump"--if you skip from track-to-track, nothing quite jumps out like the songs on New Clear Days. But that's unfair considering the glorious grand slam of their first album. It also feels an easy shortcut to say this album is darker than their debut, considering their first album's tiotle "New Clear Days" and its themes of alienation and miscommunication ("News at Ten" "Prisoners").
But this one is darker. More precisely, the music is darker. It sounds like the band wanted to distance themselves from the Jam and decided to go goth. Sonically at least. I can't imagine The Vapors in eye liner and black lace. It makes for an interesting, if not completely satisfying, tension, as if the Archies stretched out into Echo and the Bunnymen territory. Jughead as a punk? Sure. Jughead as a goth? Hrmm. The melodies and hooks are just as catchy and poppy as ever, but the lead guitar lines are more angular and dissonant. There are a lot more throbbing eighth-note bass lines. Some unexpected synths creeping in. More droning.
Yet it's not unsatisfying either. Siouxie and the Banshee's cover of Dear Prudence (1983) springs to mind: darkly throbbing over a strong pop foundation. I can't tell if Dave Fenton's inherent songwriting chops are what saves this album, or if his chops are what keeps it from transforming into something truly unexpected, like John Cale's "Barracuda" (1974), or the best Tubeway Army songs. It's a shame that this was their last album--due to disillusionment with the record industry and tiring of touring. Or maybe not. We didn't have to see them slowly fade away like the Hoodoo Gurus or the Pretenders.
Anyways ...
JIMMIE JONES -- about the People's Temple Jim Jones -- was the first single, and the closest to the sing-alongs from their first album. But their record label had just been sold, so it got very little support or airplay. It's good.
SPIDERS experiments with a new, dark synth sound that mines a Gary Numan vein while resolutely sounding like The Vapors, until two-thirds of the way through, when they begin chanting "yo-yo yo-yo" and we're in bizarre Little Bit of Soul by way of Bauhaus territory.
ISOLATED CASE is catchy but forgettable.
CIVIC HALL is a disarming gem about the lead singer's brush with the police that wouldn't be out of place on The Zombies Odessey & Oracle.
LIVE AT THE MARQUEE, DAYLIGHT TITANS, and JOHNNY'S IN LOVE (AGAIN) are more Vapors in Gothland.
The second half of the album: It's all solid. None of it is bad. Like Slade or The Romantics or the Hoodoo Gurus, these guys come across as workhorses who consistently deliver catchy songs. Solid isn't the same as inspired or magical. Then again, faced with a Coke-or-Pepsi choice, I'd take this album over many many other albums of 1981.
FINAL VERDICT: If you love New Clear Days, add these tracks to the playlist and put it on shuffle. None of the songs are bad, some of them are great, and you may be surprised by a track or two while doing the dishes. Best of all, you'll get twice as much Vapors.
Or download Spotify's Dark & Gothic playlist -- do it anyways, just for Scott Walker's "30th Century Man" and Siouxie's lush "Dear Prudence" with Robert Smith -- then swap out whichever songs you find annoying with the songs on this album. I know The Vapors weren't goths, but these songs hold their own.
Final note for Jim Coursey: The cover art is by Martin Handford, later famous for his "Where's Waldo?" books. It's worth a gander. Much darker than any situation Waldo found himself in.
https://open.spotify.com/album/7LZCSRSmIaOy0Zal1rIddZ?si=uc6B0iqITh6SNDe3PoBXQw
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