The 1981 Listening Post - Flue - One and a Half

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler

Released: 1981 Flue One And A Half Genre: Darkwave Post Punk Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Highlights: Fancy Free Feminine One And A Half (Improvisation) One of the discoveries I’ve made as I’ve aged is that I actually enjoy dancing. I don’t think I’m particularly good at it, but I’m comfortable doing it, even in grocery stores or at class reunions. If music makes me feel like moving, I’m going to move. Unfortunately, very little of the music I’ve reviewed for this project falls into that category. In the post-disco, pre-EDM early ‘80’s, not much rock or pop qualified as particularly danceable, our generation’s Homecoming head banging to You Shook Me All Night Long notwithstanding. Fancy Free, the first song on One and a Half, Flue’s 1981 Post Punk album, had me on my feet and swaying. It may not have been written to get kids onto the dance floor, but the rhythms are infectious and pervasive, creating a delicious contrast with the dark vocals, sound effects, and overall themes of the album. Imagine if Ian Curtis had survived but Joy Division had morphed into New Order anyway, taking the darkness to the clubs and adding The Edge on guitar. Or maybe if The Church had a drummer who could play it funky. There’s a clear Bauhaus influence vocally, but it’s a much looser sound than that, at least until for most of the record. We’re not talking world music polyrhythms here – Flue weren’t Talking Heads. Think Euro-pop that’s relentlessly bleak instead of bubbly. It’s a very specific niche these Dutch wavers were trying to fill. I get the feeling that they succeeded only in retrospect. YouTube commenters mention the Cure, Numan’s Tubeway Army, the Chameleons, Fad Gadget, and more. I couldn’t find any info on what happened to Flue, but they didn’t seem to hit it big anywhere. So it goes. Side two drifts out of booty shaking mode and into more straightforward Darkwave, losing some of the momentum but holding onto the inventive playing and doom-laden singing. Feminine throws the full package at you: doubled octave vocals with attitude, reverb from floor to ceiling, scritch-scratchy guitars, wide open synths. It’s a tightly wound highlight, coming in just under 3 minutes. At the other end of the spectrum, the final track, listed as One And a Half (Improvisation), sounds like an in-studio jam, but a pretty impressive one. The band manages to vary tempo, dynamics, guitar, synth, and vocal effects enough to remain interesting for just over 10 minutes. It’s a suitable wrap up to a great effort by a band that had potential, even if not many outside the Netherlands noticed at the time.