The 1980 Listening Post - Tuxedomoon - Half-Mute

Tuxedomoon - Half-Mute

#107

Reviewed by Steve Caisse

March 15 1980

Tuxedomoon

Half-Mute

Genre: Post-punk, arty, dour synthscape

Allen’s Rating: 4 out of 5

Steve’s Rating: 3 out of 5

Steve’s Highlights: 

(The self-indulgent)

What Use?  

I once told my kids about the game Space Invaders.  I even found a YouTube video so I could show them how the game looked and how it was played.  Of course, I got the “you’ve got to be kidding me” eye rolls.  But I assured them that it was all the rage and you were a lucky kid if your parents blew the Christmas wad on Atari.

That brings me to Tuxedomoon – an experimental band out of San Francisco that would later relocate to Brussels because they had an audience there.  I have read that “Half-Mute” is considered a critical triumph and is full of experimental musicianship, but 40-years on I’m not hearing it.   I suppose this is my issue looking back at the world of post-punk electronica - I’m my kids looking at an old video game and wondering how anyone thought this was cool.   In context of the times I guess someone flipping the knobs on the Moog, wailing on some out-of-tune sax, and droning about suicide was considered edgy. After all, “The Piña Colada Song” had just been #1 on the charts.   But I get the same feeling in a modern art museum when it’s a canvas full of splattered paint.  One part of you figures it’s hanging on the wall for a reason, and the other can’t rationalize why it’s any different than the mess your six-year old made last weekend that now adorns the refrigerator.  As George Harrison once said, avant-garde usually means “avant-garde a clue.”

Overall I don’t have too many signposts for this album.  Bleak, self-indulgent, morbid-themed synth music was never my thing. I like melody, harmony, actual singing, a good hook, and a groove – and this album is lacking all of them.  The closest thing I could relate to was “What Use?” which sounds like something you might find in boxset of unreleased Bowie tunes.  I did not seek out any more of their music, but since they had a long career I’m betting they pursued going in this direction.

So, I’ll give it a 3 – two from me and an extra point for its reputation as being groundbreaking.   But I’m going have to trust the critics on that – like my kids did when I moved on to explaining the importance of Pong.  

https://open.spotify.com/album/0yHEz8L0B0BT9V1C9tTuMq?si=dFJ8jvRSSEOIZecjJDNn6w