Thompson Twins - Set
February 26 1982
By Tom Mott
Thompson Twins
Set
Genre: Funky new wave synth-pop
Allen’s Rating: 4.25 out of 5
Tom’s Rating: 5.0 stars just for doing it
3.6 stars for my listening experience
Highlights:
In the Name of Love
Living in Europe
Another Fantasy
Allen’s Highlights:
Bouncing Like a Ball
In high school, I had an irrational dislike of our high school's cheerleaders. Not all of them. Some were ok IN SPITE OF BEING cheeleaders. How awful that sounds now. Reverse nerd snobbery mixed with some sort of adolescent sour grapes. But then I dropped by my ten-year reunion and had a gentle epiphany that most of my classmates -- even the cheerleadeers -- were pleasant, nice people. (Worse, they had fond memories of me!)
Thompson Twins is a high school cheerleader band. I have never wanted to dip my toes in. I had heard the hits and EVEN THOUGH I LIKED SOME OF THEM, I still wasn't interested. An irrational dislike. Not my scene.
And that's too bad, because it turns out they're pretty cool.
This album: It's funky and synthy, somewhere between Girls of Film and Blinded Me With Science and Tears for Fears with some Tones on Tail percussion. It's fun, with just enough skronking sax to give it some street cred. Those Lion King tribal drums start to feel like a cheat after a while though. Too easy. But this was at the beginning of all that. And ... I dunno. Tom Tom Club pulls it off. But here, it sounds cheap.
Do I need to add this album to my life right now? Naah. Charlie Watts died today. And whatever might be said about the Thompson Twins or about music not being a zero-sum game, they're still not the Rolling Stones, and all the layers of sequenced digital tribal drums can't beat that relentless snare drum that propels Satisfaction from beginning to end or those glorious turn-arounds in You Can't Always Get Want You Want that make me feel the Holy Ghost for a split second.
One thing I really didn't grasp in high school was how FUNKY so many of the British bands were. At least when they started out. By 1983-84-85 many of them had been polished and neutered to a glossy poppy nothingness or lilty Caribbean beach resort rhythms. MTV did something bad. It took club bands that were exciting, and polished and neutered them into pop fluff, then dressed them up in oversized clothes and silly hats which turned it all into a big goofy game of let's dress up and pretend.
It's too bad, because there's a fun, exciting club/dance band here that I wish I could go back and see in a crowded club in 1982. This music needs dance and sweat and alcohol, not Spotify at a computer. And it's waaaaaaay better than their pop crooner stuff from two years later.
https://open.spotify.com/album/0daRBYwQMN39dXflLxWbeu?si=A22RsLqgQHCbDGKWRbtTtw&dl_branch=1
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