The 1981 Listening Post - Crack the Sky - Photoflamingo

 Crack the Sky - Photoflamingo

#27

January 1981

Crack the Sky

Photoflamingo

Genre: Power Garage Prog

3.5 out of 5

Highlights:

Too Nice for That

Is That All We Know

Crack the Sky’s Photoflamingo opens with a Cheap Tricky track that almost wipes away the memory of 1980s mess. They still want to sound like everybody else. The very next track is an attempt to double down on the New Waviness of The Cars, even going so far as to sound as much like Ocasek as possible.

I can’t totally blame these guys, the sound is catchy and fun. I’d want to emulate it. 

Like the last album their sound is all over the map and they are impossible to pigeonhole. Which is to their detriment. 

In a way they are a gormless Cheap Trick. 

The bass work on “Is All We Know” is just out of this world. 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gVkCc83ejQ&list=PLlvn8uktX5Lsk6RSur4kJtOA7ZzlfKBRY (Missing 2 tracks - Hideaway and Photoflamingo)

The 1980 Listening Post - Crack the Sky - Poptown

Crack the Sky - Poptown

#234

1980 Housekeeping

Crack the Sky

Poptown

Genre: Rock

2.25 out of 5

Lowlight:

White Music

It’s always strange to me when I learn of a band that, not only have I never heard before, I’ve never heard OF before and yet they have released FIFTEEN records in the US and and AND!!! the most recent was just 8 years ago in 2012.

Who are these guys?

I’d do the research but I don’t love the album all that much. 

Are they a blues New Wave band? Are they a New Wave prog band? Are they a little of each? Are they The Cars if Robert Palmer was their band leader and the lead singer loved Roger Daltrey too much? 

Are they trying to be weird (“Living with the Lights On”’s rampant space keyboards just don’t fit, man)?

And now there are horns. 

Ok, they are just so damned annoyingly weird that I had to read up and learn that Rolling Stone listed their 1975 record as the “debut of the year”. Wow. And, in 2015, that record was listed as the 47th best prog rock record of all time. 

But this isn’t a prog rock record. In that context it sounds like a band trying to be relevant to a changing sound. And not really able to hang on to the road it’s trying to travel. Or, in the case of “White Music”, like they are taking their cues from the worst impulses of The Tubes. Or, “All American Boy”, which makes me long for mid-70s Sparks. 

It’s an album like this that makes me truly no longer wonder why I’ve never heard of Crack the Sky. 

https://music.apple.com/us/album/white-music/440608819