The Romantics - National Breakout
#466
by Robbie Rist
December 15 1980
The Romantics
National Breakout
Genre: Straight Up Motor City Power Pop
Allen’s Rating: 4 out of 5
Robbie’s Rating: 4.5
Highlights:
Tomboy
Take Me Out Of The Rain
A Night Like This
Ah. The Sophomore Slump. The dreaded ‘second record after a hit’ thing. Expectations too high. A band now has six months to write a second record when they had years to write the first.
Well, it used to be that way. I’m quoting from a long dead business model.
You heard What I Like About You. You liked what it was about.
It was fun. Upbeat. Joyous.
Like My Sharona. Without all of that spraying jizz.
It was a glorious time to love 60s influenced pop.
So many choices.
And so many of them had these great first records.
And really good second records.
Which many are only discovering now.
Because most of these power pop second records of the time went off like a fart in a hurricane.
Victims of ‘new beatles’ hype.
Hell, the fucking Beatles weren’t the Beatles until a few records in.
Is National Breakout a ‘better record’ than their eponymous debut?
Is it worse?
I’ll say it sounds more like them than their debut does.
And I think that makes it better.
Is there a What I Like About You on it?
No.
I think songs like that are lightening in a bottle.
But there is Tomboy.
The sound of teen joy clocking in at two minutes, thirty one seconds.
It’s a bigger sound.
Not so friendly. Not so ‘pop’. I mean, it’s basically about being in love with a lesbian.
That’s one of the things I love about this record.
They didn’t want to play nice on album 2.
They wanted to sound like the blow the doors off live band they actually were.
And, minus ‘that song’, the craft is just as evident.
A Night Like This always caught me daydreaming about summer nights and the hope of SOME kind......ANY kind of sexual activity (that would include another person).
As a 17 year old man would.
National Breakout.....a potential stunning show opener.
The modern Bo Diddley stomp of I Can’t Tell You Anything.
Being a major sucker for mid tempo, strummy Byrds style songs, Take me Out Of The Rain ticks off every box in the joy/melancholy column.
This record must have been a major bomb because, by the time their next record come out (ohhh.....the days of ‘artist development’, where labels would give artists a few chances to fail....), guitarist Mike Skill is gone (he’s back now. First on bass, now back on guitar) and their guitar tones got SUPER heavy. (Which I loved...but I will do that review when we do 1981).
If this was a debut record, the world would have bowed down.
But, alas, it came on the heels of one of the great pop singles in history.
Which basically relegated them to one hit wonder stats.
But, as they proved with this record, The Romantics were so much more than that.
Your mileage may vary.
https://open.spotify.com/album/0c4PLSCFgwCmMYmtnx6nxb?si=ce_mZ5vZS3GmBE6kxDgJxw
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