Reviewed by Allen Lulu / LISTENING POST DISCOVERY
Released: October 1981 Swingers Practical Jokers Genre: New Wave Rating: 4.75 out of 5 Highlights: Practical Jokers More Counting The Beat It Ain't What You Dance It's The Way That You Dance It Ayatollah Five O’Clock Shadow Hit The Beach Love the new wavy parts of Split End but hate everything Tim Finn brought to the band and thought Neil Finn was a little too soft around the edges which he put on display with the brilliant Crowded House album a few years later? Turns out there was another Enz that went off to make his own stuff. Guitarist Phil Judd created Swingers and they keep that angular candle burning bright on Practical Jokers. You know this record. Well, you probably know the single, “Counting the Beat” because, even tho it wasn’t a hit stateside, it still got some New Wave station play. And, dammit if “It Ain't What You Dance, It's The Way You Dance It” should be an 80’s retrospective staple. This whole record is like Gary Numan discovered prozac. “More” is as close to Split Enz as any of them have ever gotten which suggests to me that Judd was a major driver in the project, as opposed to Tim who was inadvertently trying to kill everything he touched. There isn’t a bad track on it. And it should have been in the pantheon of great New Wave records of the era. Instead, it’s a forgotten piece of plastic. Well, I heard it, at least.
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