The 1981 Listening Post - Gary Numan - Dance

 Gary Numan - Dance

#408

September 4 1981

Gary Numan

Dance

Genre: Synth-jazz-wave

4.25 out of 5

Highlights:

Night Talk

Cry, the Clock Said

She’s Got Claws

Crash

You Are, You Are

I’ve talked a lot about my affection for Mr. Numan. 

It was sparked and is intricately woven with an unrequited crush that defined my mid adolescence. 

So, it’s hard for me to be objective when it comes to him and yet, because of that and because, when I was in a car accident, the aforementioned crush came into the store where I worked to say hello and referred to me as “Crash”, which is a play on a title of a song from this record, I decided to take it for myself to see if I felt the same way that I did when I did the Numan Reflecting Pool series over 10 years ago. (Reflecting Pool was the name I gave to catalog retrospectives of bands that I already knew or loved and was reassessing).

Prior to this project knowing that Nash the Slash played violin on “Cry, the Clock Said” would have meant nothing to me. But because of our association with him now I noticed that there’s an improvisational and subversive quality to the playing, and Nash’s playing helps echo the sadness in this end-of-relationship song in a way that, heretofore, I didn’t think was possible for Gary. 

Roger Taylor’s drums on “Crash” and “You Are, You Are” are unmistakable as they echo the work and production he was employing on Fun in Space

I love this album but it’s not for everyone. It’s the deep cut Numan. It’s the last good record he will put out for decades. In fact, in relation to the rest of 1981, I like it even better than last time. 

Here’s some of that original review:

“I like Dance. I'm one of the few. It's such a departure from the previous albums, where they were cold and distant, Dance is minimalist, melancholic and lamenting. Employing more jazzy rhythms than rock, the first side opens and closes with 9+ minute meditations on prostitution and breakups, respectively.

From what I can tell these songs, or many of them, are built on drum loops even though Cedric Sharpley and Roger Taylor (Yes, THAT Roger Taylor) are credit as drums and percussion. A year after this album Queen would release Hot Space and I know that Taylor was instrumental in pushing the band toward synth drums and keyboards, was he influenced by Numan? Perhaps.

Dance is the record that sparked the downward tumble from the charts for Gary. Well, it had to happen sometime, yes? Here's the thing. What most people never realize about Mr. Webb. (Gary's real surname). He was born in 1958. When the first Tubeway Army record was released he was all of 20. When Dance was released he was 23. Between those 4 years he had already released three seminal New Wave records, unknowingly changed music, and sold millions of albums.

Not too shabby.

All before he was 23.

Listening to Dance with the understanding that the composer/singer is the same age as most people when they get out of college (or just slightly older by a year) it now comes across as a much more mature work and a bold turn away from what was expected of him and what popularized him.

It should have been applauded.

This is a headset record, a moody son of a bitch (at least the first side) and a very rich and rewarding experience. I have to say it's awfully brave to put not one but two long opuses on the first side. Usually those tracks are relegated to the second side after you've captured the audience's attention. Gary Numan outshines his earlier self simply by doing what he wants to do.

Dance is more Tangerine Dream than Kraftwerk and that's just fine with me.

The songs on Side Two are a little more in keeping with the Numan of old. "Crash" could have slid off The Pleasure Principle and, I believe, had it and "She's Got Claws" and "You Are, You Are" opened this album people would have been quicker to embrace it and quicker to embrace the moodier aspects of the rest of it.

The only real letdown is "Boys Like Me" which continues the jazzy motifs of Cry and Slowcar. I imagine that I could do without the song mainly because those other two take up almost 20 minutes of the record and by the time we get to Boys I've got the idea and it's too familiar, too redundant. Other times it works splendidly as on "My Brother's Time", a dirge that appears to be a lamentation on libidinous indifference.

Dance doesn't suck. I think the title isn't referring to the act of dancing but, rather, courtship. And failed ones, at that. On that scale it succeeds.”

https://music.apple.com/us/album/dance/1325734803

The 1980 Listening Post - Gary Numan - Telekon

 Gary Numan - Telekon

#379

by Timothy Sprague

September 5 1980

Gary Numan

Telekon

Genre: New Wave

Allen’s Rating: 5 out of 5

Timothy’s Rating: 3 out of 5

Allen’s Highlights:

This Wreckage

I Die: You Die

I’m an Agent

Remember I Was Vapour

Please Push No More

Timothy’s Highlights:

I Dream of Wires 

This Wreckage

by Timothy Sprague

It is astonishing to my American ears that this album debuted at number one in the UK upon its release in September, 1980. And it was Gary Numan’s third number one album! While Kenny Rogers ruled the airwaves in the US, our friends across the pond were inhabiting a whole new landscape. Notwithstanding, Gary’s previous album The Pleasure Principle scored a huge hit with Cars. I wore the hell out of that cassette in 7th grade but, over the years, mainly thought of Numan as a guy who listened to Bowie’s Berlin period and said, “I can do that!” 

I had plunked down my hard-earned paper route money at the Hanover Mall for his 1981 followup to Telekon, Dance and was rather disappointed. (She’ll take a slow car to Chiiiinaaa… ugh.) If Telekon had been in the bin my opinion of his work probably would not have have suffered so much damage, but that was all they had that day and I wasn’t going home without some Gary Numan. Unfortunately, it wasn’t his best work. Beyond that, I didn’t give much thought to the rest of his albums until 2013, when he released Splinter, aided by Trent Reznor. Which was great! 

So, I listened to Telekon and here is what I think…. Man, I was being really unkind with my Bowie clone criticism. The influence is clear but Numan added a lot of his own style and it’s pretty unfair to single him out when almost the entire New Wave movement was influenced by Bowie. The bass and guitar parts add a funky human element to the ethereal synthesizer sound and alien robot vocals. Gary is also a very good songwriter. He eloquently captures the Blade Runner zeitgeist of the times on tunes like The Aircrash Bureau, I Dream of Wires and Remember I Was Vapour. Side note: Gary now lives a few miles from me in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. His house in Northridge has a creepy castle look to it but I have only seen pictures. On a hot July day while I write this, I picture going over to his place for a barbecue. No doubt he requires many extra layers of sunblock before going in the pool. Hope to see him out and about at the supermarket one day. 

https://open.spotify.com/album/3QEbNm2vlHTCnTESDISwIA?si=0KYmi6a_Rlat9lD09fDrSg

The 1986 Listening Post - Gary Numan - Strange Charm

Gary Numan - Strange Charm

#564

November 1986

Gary Numan

Strange Charm

Genre: Is he really still doing this???

2 out of 5

The opening track "My Breathing" is as haunting as any of Gary's mid-80s output. The sax is, in this song, relegated to ethereal backing sounds and flows nicely in the mix of this decidedly mid-east influenced track.

But as Strange Charm plods along, with it's non-existent variations on the electro-funk theme one thing is very certain: Gary Numan has run out of ideas. From the repetitive droning of "I Can't Stop" to the blatant attempt at pop relevancy of "Need", I am finding my patience with Mr. Numan wearing oh so very thin. The album which started off so promising just devolves into run of the mill Numan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XQvyAOiwlc&list=PLBJ7ztNazTVCXrHbXxdgO2ufbVtt4UNzp

The 1985 Listening Post - Gary Numan - The Fury

Gary Numan - The Fury

#364/1000      1000 guys!!!!!

September 1985

Gary Numan

The Fury

Genre: Garbage

2 out of 5

I can’t believe we have listened to 1000 records together. I can’t believe I’ve listened to 1000 records in roughly 7.5 months.

I am so sorry that it comes on this record. 

I have a deep affection for Gary. My biggest teenage crush is the one who turned me on to him. The first 3 records are, in my opinion, masterworks. (well, not the 1st one. Tubeway Army is good but he was still trying to be a punk then) Replicas, Pleasure Principle, Telekon, fantastic. Groundbreaking. Influential. I even liked Dance. But then Gary goes into the wilderness for a long time. And this one is just terrible. Gary’s a follower in the form he invented, which I imagine is difficult. 

I hated this record when I first heard it 10 years ago. I still hate it. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K87ZnF6S2Gc

The 1984 Listening Post - Gary Numan - Berserker

Gary Numan - Berserker


#301
November 9 1984
Gary Numan
Berserker
3.25 out of 5

Highlights:
Berserker
Child with a Ghost
My Dying Machine

This one isn't available anywhere so I had to pull it up on my EHD cuz I have an abnormal affection for all things Numan.
Well, that's not totally true. HAD. Cuz, right around I, Assassin, Gary seemed obsessed with losing me.
He succeeded. Berserker is not great. Now, I know Gary's had problems and issues with depression, etc, and it did nothing for me the first time I heard it, when I did the Numan retrospective or today.

Here's part of the 08 review:
"This is a big, bold heaping pile of industrial noise. Predating Nine Inch Nails by some time there is no way Reznor hadn't heard this record. A lot of synth musicians were playing around with these sounds, even Sparks found themselves so far in love with their keyboards that they got lost in a miasmic pit of redundant faux-industrial over-production.
Songs like "My Dying Machine" come dangerously close to sounding like Harold Faltermeyer but that was the sound of the times, yes? "Cold Warning" starts off promising but crumbles under the weight of it's own self-aware gravitas and length. Dammit, Gary, cut these tracks by about 90 seconds each, please! And when he does return to the bass driven jazzy sounds on "Pump Me Up" the whole affair just feels tired and dressed up to sound new but not original in any way
If there is any saving grace it's on "Child with a Ghost" a song Numan wrote for his deceased-by-overdose friend and original bassist, Paul Gardiner. "Child" is the most beautiful song Gary has recorded since his Telekon days. A piece of brilliance almost marred by a dreadful sax that appears about 3/4 of the way in."




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9pMWsbKiN8

The 1983 Listening Post - Gary Numan - Warriors

Gary Numan - Warriors

September 16 1983
Gary Numan
Warriors
1.5 out of 5

Wow. How the mighty have fallen. When others, like Depeche Mode, are deepening the genre (and I still didn’t like their record this year) Gary, who helped invent it, now sounds like a relic. I know that this is but the tip of a downward spiral and I also know that he has his own issues but, looking at this cover, where our hero is replete in post-apocalyptic garb, one could be forgiven for expecting music that emulates it. It doesn’t. This is like a sequel to the bored and boring I, Assassin.
I do love this quote from Gary about this record:
“I thought that by getting in some of the best players and singers around I could make the albums more 'musical,' and that my own limitations would be less of a problem. What I actually did was progressively bury the very style that my fans had enjoyed. For a while I still sang, of course, but I swamped my own performances in huge layers of backing vocals. Musically I became much more of an arranger of noises than a musician, at least, that was how I felt. I didn't realise what I was doing, but with Warriors I was lighting the fires of what came close to being my funeral...If burying myself under the impressive performances of [other musicians and singers] was, ultimately, the wrong direction in which to be moving, it did give the albums some stunning musical moments. Warriors had as fine a bunch of players as it was possible to get.”
Yeah, it’s bad. And it only gets worse for the father of synth-wave.

Listening Post - Gary Numan Rankings

What Numan albums should you buy? What's the aggregate ranking? How bored am I?

Pleasure Principle - A+ (100)
Replicas - A (97)
Telekon - A- (90)
Exile - B+ (89)
New Anger - B+ (89)
Tubeway Army - B+ (89)
Dead Son Rising - B (86)
Sacrifice - B (86)
Pure - B- (81)
Dance - B- (81)
Strange Charm - C- (71)
Berserker - C- (71)
The Fury - D+ (68)
Machine + Soul - D (65)
Outland - D (65)
Warriors - D (65)
I, Assassin - D (65)

Gary's Septenary Rating: B- (80)
Actually considering just how god awful so much of his output was in the 80s-90s, this rating is much higher than I anticipated.

Listening Post: Gary Numan - Dead Son Rising

Gary Numan - Dead Son Rising - 2011

Gary's like an old friend that you never want to invite over. He's difficult and he thinks he's better than everyone else, or that HE came up with the ideas first and, therefore....and you just can't shut him up.
But, he's a good friend and when he has something to say, you give him a chance. Right?

In transferring my reviews from the other blog I've lost the one for Jagged, but, I've heard it, reviewed it and I'm not going there again.

Employing more pops and clicks and glitches in all the right places, Gary settles in to a nice grandfatherly place for a style of music that has sort of seen better days. It's not the 90s anymore, and I'm not sure everything needs to sound like a soundtrack to a David Fincher movie anymore.

There are no surprises here. Gary's still scoring apocalyptic sci-fi movies that don't exist. But he's employing acoustic guitars instead of just all synths. He's broadening his palette and that, for the most part, works. He gets downright danceable on "The Fall" and his beats, while they aren't groundbreaking, they don't completely suck.

I like Dead Son Rising. The songs may have come from demos for other albums but I can't recognize the eras for each, save for the slavish devotion to Trent Reznor, it's not that the songs were written in the 90s (they might have been), it's that Gary's stuck in that era. Although, I swear he's also been listening to OK Computer and KID A a LOT while working on this record. If he could have come up with "Fitter/Happier", I'm sure he would be happy.

But then again, I'm not sure Gary's ever been happy.

Grade: B
ASide: Big Noise Transmission, The Fall
BlindSide: Resurrection, We Are The Lost
DownSide: For the Rest of My Life (reprise), Into Battle

Listening Post - Gary Numan -Pure

Gary Numan - Pure - 2000

Numan wasted little time building on the success of Exile. Okay, three years. But what a nice three years those must have been.
Numan excoriated many of his fans' beliefs on Exile, attacking God and had his biggest success in a while. So, after touring and rebuilding on that success he went back in the studio and came out with.....
A Nine Inch nails record.
Angry. Industrial. All of what we love about Trent and Marilyn and you know what? Why the fuck not? After all, Corgan, manson, Reznor all count Numan as a major major influence. If he's going to be relevant he might as well emulate and learn from those who learned from him. It would be stupid and mean to expect him to be as forward a thinking innovator as he was 30 years ago. I mean, come on, the guy practically invented electro-New Wave. Howzabout he just apply what those who learned from him to his own style and see what he can come up with?
"Rip" sounds like "Closer" part two. And, guess what? It was a hit. Yep. Gary was back on the (UK) charts with this NIN rip. But, as NIN rips go, it's pretty awesome.
There are no suprises on Pure and it's hard for me to fully recommend because it's pretty damned repetitive. I was listening to "Rip" and it seemed to go on FOREVER. After it was over I realized that I had two copies of the song on the iPod and it played them back to back and I never noticed that one song ended and other began.
That's not great. But, it's still progress, Pure is. From Sacrifice to Exile to this.
The album really gets going toward the end. "Listen to my Voice" is a lovely melody sung in that nasal Numan tone we loved so long ago.
"Prayer for the Unborn" and "Little In Vitro" are songs that deal in some way with what Gary and his wife, Gemma, were going through, with miscarriages and IVF as they attempted to have children. They have been successful. And so are the songs.
You won't be surprised by Pure. You might not even like it. You might think Numan is doing himself and us a disservice in his slavish adoration of Reznor and Manson.
I say it's pretty damned good. All things considered, suffering through the likes of Warriors and Machine + Soul to get here was well worth it.

Pure - Gary Numan

Grade B-
ASide: Pure, Rip
BlindSide: Listen to My Voice, Little In Vitro
DownSide:

Listening Post - Gary Numan -Exile

Gary Numan - Exile - 1997

Exile opens with the industrial return-of-Jesus-Christ song "Dominion Day". It's angry and ominous, almost confessional, bleak and harkens back to the previous album, Sacrifice, as a template for Gary's revitalized direction. In other words, the funk is dead, bring on the dire.
Once again Numan is in control of almost all the instruments, save a guitar here or keyboard there. This abject control, in addition to his singular theme, that God and the Devil operate on the same playing field (and questions what we think of each, namely God's "goodness"), succeeds in creating one of the darkest and most satisfying records of Gary's career, or at least of the previous 10 years.
The textures and rhythms on some of Exile could be interpreted as almost middle eastern. At least that's what I hear in the drum programming. An earthy, dusty, ethereal and sexual pounding. Again I am listening to the extended versions of all these tracks so each song is about 1/3 longer than the original release. I don't know if that matters. There's a hypnotic quality to all of Numan's late 90s material and it makes for a relatively easy but terrifying listen.
Numan excoriates himself in interviews about albums like Machine + Soul as well he should. He was pandering to what he thought would work for sales and the result was way below par.
This is him, on the other hand, talking about Exile:
""Exile" to me is one big horror story. Personally. I don't believe in God at all, but if I'm wrong and there is a God, what kind of god would it be who would give us the world we live in? It certainly cannot be a good deity. At best God would have to be cruel, selfish, and he would have to have a huge ego. "Thou shalt not worship any other gods before me." That is just one huge ego trip."
Certainly he is focused.
Exile is a drum-loop heavy record and you might even recognize the track "Dark" from various movie trailers of the decade as well as "Dark City" and some video games.
I like Exile in theory a little more than in practice but that's a paltry dismissal because I'm not a big fan of industrial rock. As that sort of stuff goes, it's very satisfying.
It also sounds like a good album to _____ to. After all, it's about God n' shit.
Right?

Exile - Gary Numan

Grade: B+
ASide: Dominion Day, Absolution
BlindSide: Dark, The Angel Wars
DownSide:

Listening Post - Gary Numan - Random & Random 2(Tribute)

Gary Numan - Random & Random 2 - 1997 & 1998

I've never covered "tribute" or cover albums before. In 1997 I was in a now defunct record store on la Cienega Blvd in LA. I don't even know how I ended up in a conversation with the girl working the floor. She was a hard looking, fatigue wearing lesbian (don't ask how I know that) who recommended this album to me. How she knew I would be interested in Gary Numan or anything Numan-esque is beyond me.
The record is hard to find and I had no idea that there was a sequel, the link to which I've included here.
Some of the stuff is terrific. Earl Brutus' version of "M.E." with it's Queen breakdown in the middle for one and An Pier's sweet "Are 'Friends' Electric?" for another. Some of it isn't. But it's worth grabbing if for the only reason that it makes Numan seem totally relevant again.
Many of the songs on the first volume repeat themselves, the classics like "Me! I disconnect from you" and "We are So Fragile" (The Jesus Jones version being one of my favorites.) and some are downright nearly unrecognizable from the original, like The Orb's 9 minute techno opus version of "Jo the Waiter".
Amanda Ghost's version of "Absolution" from that year's Exile is lovely followed by a crunchy and great second version of "We are So Fragile" by Bis.
Other versions like Dave Clarke's "Cars" is basically nothing more than a remix of the original. But Deadsy's version of "Replicas" builds on the paranoia of the original and mines it for some truly end-of-century persecution psychosis (Deadsy is Gregg Allman's son Elijah Blue's band)
Jimi Tenor's Merry Go Round Calliope of terror version of Down in the Park is inspired, it should be pointed out.


Random Two is a bunch of remixes. I hate remixes.

Random 2 - Gary Numan

Listening Post - Gary Numan - Sacrifice

Gary Numan - Sacrifice - 1994

This is not your father's Gary Numan Record. Forget all that you know or knew of the former Mr. Webb. The saxophoniness? Gone. The futuro-electro-funk? Swept away.
Gary's got inspiration and it's from God and that dark sludge we call the 90s.
What I am actually listening to is not the release that you can hear on Lala (see below). I've got the extended Numa release. Every song is longer and none of them suffer for it.
We haven't heard Gary's spoken word despair since, well, Are 'Friends' Electric? and here they are on "Deadliner" mining the same aural tapestry that Marilyn Manson and Trent Reznor would be making popular just around the corner. Was Gary forward thinking (again?) or was he following the trend of the day? No matter. He's not interested in selling to the masses. Been there, done that. He's got bigger fish to fry. God, for one. From what I understand, Numan's atheism will take a much larger presence on fothcoming releases but here it's only touched on with songs like, "Pray" and "A Question of Faith". The nuclear winter industrial backdrop is really a perfect setting for Gary's paranoid vision and worldview.
The industrial rhythms and cold, depressed vitriol really drives this record. Sure, I can hear how Gary would have fucked these songs up a few years back with Saxophones and overly sexualized R&B backup singers, but without them to drag the proceedings into some weirdo gotta-get-on-the-radio belief system they stand starkly and remind me why Numan was so successful in the first place. His asperger's which rendered him open to interpretation as arrogant or diffident only serves by the music. In fact, I wonder if he could have made this record, or the Machine Trilogy or even New Anger without it. And when he tried to reach out and incorporate soul music to his repertoire he could only fail since connection is probably the hardest thing for him.
"This is not love, this is not even worth a point of view" Numan once sang on "I Die, You Die". He was right. Because what he was really singing about is that "Love" is really just perspective and if you can't connect, for whatever reason but especially if you aren't wired that way, then "love" truly is just a point of view.
Sad? No. Because that's perspective as well.
I'm just glad to have Gary Numan back.
There is actually a love song on this album. "You Walk in My Soul" was written for Gemma, who started off as a fan and later became his wife. It's as pretty as anything Numan's done; he does seem to have a knack for those sweeping electro-ballads, if it is a little rote.
Sacrifice is overblown, overdone and very self-conscious but for me it works on every level and is a connector back to the original Numan style and worldview and the very reason he is looked at as an innovator rather than a relic.
I notice that Gary plays all the instruments himself on Sacrifice (save a guitar or bass on a couple tracks) and I think that serves him well. Again, I'm not sure he's the best collaborator. When he's in total control (or working with drug addicts like Paul Gardiner) he's able to get to his core. And he can rock again, like on "Love and Napalm", he isn't afraid of it anymore. The marriage of machine/soul never worked. The marriage of metal/machine has always worked. It's a welcome rediscover, even if it does run out steam by the end.

Sacrifice - Gary Numan

Grade: B
ASide: Love & Napalm, You Walk in My Soul
BlindSide: Pray, Deadliner, Desire
DownSide:

Listening Post: Gary Numan - Machine + Soul

Gary Numan - Machine + Soul - 1992

Dammit, dammit, dammit.
I'm gonna listen to this all the way through because that's the task I have presented myself. But...well, let's just let Gary speak for the record:
"I convinced myself [that Machine and Soul] was all right, that it was a 'clever' mix of funk, pop, rock and electronics. I almost convinced myself that I liked it. Not long after it was released though, I had to admit, only to myself for a while, that it was not what I'd hoped. There was nothing wrong with it as such, it just doesn't have much of me on it - not playing-wise, but emotionally. It is the most 'non-Numan' Numan album I've ever made, for my style, sound and character are completely missing. Whatever people think about my music, it's always been very personal. So, at a time when I was experiencing extreme lows in my career and private life, the last thing I felt like making was a shiny, polished pop record. But that's what I'd done."

He went on: "Nothing was right...That music, those clothes, that haircut. Imagine falling off a ship in the ocean, knowing if you stop swimming you're finished. That's what I was doing then. I was trying not to die."

There ya have it. Rendered anonymous on his own record. By himself! It's your own fucking label, Gary Numan!
Crap.
Wanna be funk. Soulless soul music. What is this guy thinking?
But you haven't really experienced bad music until you've heard Gary Numan try to RAP on "Poison". Seriously.
And, you gotta believe me when I say, he does a cover of Prince's "U Got the Look". And it's bad.

And just look at that cover. Gary looks so...sad. Like he's trying to tell you not to buy this record. "Look, I'm trapped in here but you don't have to be. You can save your money. See all that negative space on this cover? That's what the inside of the record feels like. Save yourself. Buy a Nine Inch Nails record. Seriously. Those guys are good. I'm...I'm just gonna sit her and stare at my...ooh, shiny buttons!"

Gary just spent so much energy on trying to create a mutant hybrid of Machine music and soul music. (Hence the title) After so many years, here's hoping he got the hint and gave it up.

Machine And Soul - Gary Numan

Grade: D
ASide: Machine and Soul
BlindSide:
DownSide: Generator, The Skin Game, Poison, Emotion...let's face it. This record is bad.

Listening Post - Gary Numan - Outland

Gary Numan - Outland - 1991

First off let me say that there is nothing inherently "wrong" with Outland. Some songs, like "Soul Protection" are actually just fine. They are cold, industrial piffle, but they don't out and out suck.
It's the most Sci-Fi of Gary's Groove-Metal albums. But it's not very good. Allmusic guide gives it 3 stars but no actual review. And that's sort of a telltale sign of the music industry just giving up on him in general. Outland doesn't stay with you, doesn't mean anything and, were it not for the abundance of sci-fi movie samples, it would be of little interest at all.
Which saddens me because I really liked New Anger. But, like I said, it doesn't SUCK it's just not very memorable. Some tracks, "Dream Killer" & "Dark Sunday" might actually have had some resonance had Gary not been spending the past decade mining the same sound and rewriting the same song over and over.
It's really a shame because Numan could have mounted something of a comeback if he built on the sounds and songs from Metal Rhythm.
"Heart" is a pretty ballad, the kind we've come to expect now. They aren't surprising and therefore I find them useless. But that's a really harsh word to describe an album that isn't awful.
If you enjoy Numan's soundscaping and over-production then you will like this record. But you don't ever need to hear it. I don't think Gary needs to hear it. I don't think he listened to it while he was making it.
Even though he's grabbing snippets of sci-fi flicks like Blade Runner and Terminator, Aliens and Predator, there's no real cohesive focus on the record. And something like "Devotion" is just downright awful. An exasperating and desperate plea for relevance in the funk world from someone who has no busy trying to play there.

Outland - Gary Numan

Grade D
ASide: Soul Protection
BlindSide: Heart
DownSide: From Russia Infected

Listening Post - Gary Numan - Metal Rhythm/New Anger

Gary Numan - Metal Rhythm - 1988

Once again I joined the Columbia House Record Club. Or maybe it was another one. Back in the summer of '88. The promise of 8 or 12 free cds was too enticing. Never mind the high cost of subsequent CDs. or that if I didn't send the mailer back in by the allotted time I was stuck with some horrible featured title. This was how I was purchasing music in the late 80s.
One of the freebies I grabbed was "New Anger" by Gary Numan. I don't know if I was trying to recapture my youth (I hadn't bought a New Numan record since I, Assassin in 1982) or if I was just amazed that there was a NEW Numan record (In the states he was almost unheard from) or both, but I got it.
And it was good.
Great? No. But good enough. And now, listening to it 22 years later within the context of Gary's catalog I realize just how good it was.
By 1988 Numan had by far abandoned the sound that made him famous. The synth laden, electronic, post-apocalyptic, science fiction sounds of Replicas, The Pleasure Principle & Telekon were now 8 years gone. Even the bridging record, Dance, sort of harkened back to the Gary of old while embracing the jazzier sounds that Numan was so interested in and would throw himself into. Those records, I, Assassin, Warriors, Berserker (to a lesser extent), The Fury & Strange Charm, while keeping one toe in the dystopian wasteland, were now more funk and jazz focused and fans would have to accept that this was what Gary Numan was about, what he wanted to do and what he wanted his sound to be.
And they rejected him.
For good reason. If you go back and you read the reviews of those records they aren't good. None of them, actually. Not in total at least.
So, what did Numan do? He dumped his own label, Numa, signed with IRS and put out "Metal Rhythm" which in the states would be tinged with blue hue and called "New Anger".
Riddled with scratchy, metallic guitars and sounding very very much like it was influenced by Robert Palmer's "Heavy Nova", the new CD actually fills me with hope that Gary has found his footing.
The metal funk of "This is Emotion" coupled with the sprawling soundscape of "Hunger" open the record with promise. Even that damned sax doesn't bug me.
But it's the Palmer-ripping "New Anger" that sets the record off for me. It's the most metal and rocking Gary has sounded since Tubeway Army. It's hooky and catchy and it just works. Probably should have opened the record with it's cold Eurythmics sound and it's "Welcome to New Anger" screed. "Devious" is the closest thing Gary has come to a truly grooving song (It's still very Dave Stewart/Robert Palmer sounding but it avails itself of that fairly well).
It's also the most uptempo record gary's put out in years. If ever. It so closely resembles the "Machine Trilogy" that it almost sounds like a true return to form. "Respect" actually deserves a live rendition and the album closer "Don't Call My Name" is as haunting a piece of work as he's ever committed to vinyl.
I really like this album more than I did 22 years ago and even more writing about now than I did when I first relistened last night.

New Anger - Gary Numan

Grade: B+
ASide: New Anger, America
BlindSide: This is Emotion, Devious, Voix, Respect, Young Heart,
DownSide: Nothing really, this is a solid outing.

Listening Post - Gary Numan - Strange Charm

Gary Numan - Strange Charm - 1986

I had no idea, in 1986, that Gary Numan was still recording and releasing full length records. I am willing to bet that most people in the US felt the same way that I did. And yet, here he is, pumping out another one, his TENTH studio album since 1978. 10 albums in 8 years. Not even thirty. It's quite a catalog. At this point I wonder if Gary might have been better suited to putting out instrumental records like Jean-Michel Jarre. They certainly were working in the same idiom. He didn't, obviously. More interested Gary is in pushing Tessa Niles' and Linda Taylor's backing vocals further up in the mix and bringing in that violin which hadn't really been prevalent since Telekon. (The damned Sax is back as well, though.
The opening track "My Breathing" is as haunting as any of Gary's mid-80s output. The sax is, in this song, relegated to ethereal backing sounds and flows nicely in the mix of this decidedly mid-east influenced track.
I almost fell for it on "Unknown and Hostile". I almost believed that the first track was a lie and we were about to hear Gary Numan re-indulge his I, Assassin self when the guitars (!!!) crank in and the crowded Peter Gabriel sound fight each other through the tapestry and, I can hardly believe I'm saying this, make me want to hear the live version of this.
Then there is "The Sleeproom". A song so haunting and alternately sparse and gigantic that it could be placed next to "Child with a Ghost" or at least reign as a valid B side to that gem. And "New Thing From London Town" is one of the more energetic and positively danceable trance track ever to come out Mr. Numan's machines.
As Strange Charm plods along, with it's non-existent variations on the electro-funk theme one thing is very certain: Gary Numan has run out of ideas and if he doesn't do something to veer off this track I might have to abandon this Listening Post. From the repetitive droning of "I Can't Stop" to the blatant attempt at pop relevancy of "Need", I am finding my patience with Mr. Numan wearing oh so very thin. The album which started off so promising just devolves into run of the mill Numan.

Thing is, a lot of my reaction to this could be that I just plodded through The Fury and ANYTHING halfway decent could be read as inspiring. Dunno. Maybe.

Strange Charm - Gary Numan

Grade: C-
ASide:My Breathing, The Sleeproom
BlindSide: Unknown and Hostile
DownSide: I Can't Stop

Listening Post - Gary Numan - The Fury

Gary Numan - The Fury - 1985

Another year, another Gary Numan record. Time to LiveBlog.

1. The Fury - Maybe the ugliest and least interesting songs I've ever heard. Filled with samples from, what else, "Blade Runner". Funny, Gary was a harbinger of that movie, calling his skin jobs "Replicas" years before Ridley Scott named them "Replicants" and now he's so obsessed with the movie that he's sampling it on his records. And it's bad. The use of the term "New Anger" would rear it's head a few years later, though. Not horrible in the end, just kind of plodding.
2. "This Disease" Sounding a lot like something off Berserker mashed up with Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer". Not a good combination. As the lyrics say, "This is a bad decision".

It's nice to know that even Gary thinks the cover of the record is awful and probably put people off from buying it. I know it did me. He now says it makes him look like "he man who lost it all at Monte Carlo". I agree. It's awful. Gary, you're not Bryan Ferry.

3. Your Fascination By 1985 everyone and their brother had a synthesizer and fancied themselves the next Thomas Dolby or Howard Jones. Numan sounds like them with the flu.
4. Miracles - a dirge dressed up in Manheim Steamroller clothing. I dunno, this just reminds me of a Christmas song gone bad.
5. The Pleasure Skin The drum machine is programmed. The chorale font on the moog is fired up. The echo chamber doubling on Gary's voice is primed. And the result is...a song by definition only. Redundant at best. Gary sounds more like Adam Ant than ever.

This album is really trying my patience. I know that Allmusic rates it slightly higher than Berserker but at least Berserker sounded alive and had that "Child with a Ghost" song. So far this is, at best, a retread of mediocre material. If he was retreading his heyday or whipped out a guitar or something I might have more patience.

6. Creatures - Sounds like "One Vision" by Queen before it devolves into a cast off from Dance. Like "Boys Like Me" but nowhere near as good. And for a song to be nowhere near as good as something as mediocre as that is really something. I have to wonder how much Gary wishes he could have gotten Joan Armatrading to sing with him. But, really, Gary, she's never gonna do it.

A lot of this record sounds like "Simply Irresistible" and other songs by Robert Palmer. I don't know which came first but I know that one was better than the other. Guess which.

7. Tricks Hey! The sax is back! And it's better than ever! (Psst, no it's not but I've been drinking for the last three songs...) I think Gary Numan fancies himself the leader of some progressive jazz-electro fusion jam band. He's not, you know. Points for trying? Okay. But I get no money for listening. So it's a wash. And this song is bad.
8. God Only Knows Not the Beach Boys song but easily the most listenable on the record. The disembodied longing in Numan's voice works here and works well. With the first track, the best offering on the record.
9. I Still Remember And that sax is back. What is Gary Numan's obsession with this instrument? Oh, wait. It's 1985. Quarterflash. Romeo Void. Huey Lewis. It was the 2nd coming of the saxophone in rock. Only when it started it was almost ironic how these new wave artists were appropriating one of the defining instruments of early rock and roll and using it to forward their minimalist (read:edgy) soundscapes. Maybe this sounded fresh 25 years ago. It doesn't now. Superfluous sax solos always, to me, feel directionless and ambient, like a lead guitarist noodling through the pentatonic scale and not really writing anything for the audience's ears to grab a hold of. Any good solo is like a verse hook or a chorus. You should WANT to hear it, to get to it. But in these instances they just come across as improvisation.

Gary's overstaying his welcome with me.....

The Fury - Gary Numan

Grade: D+
ASide: Call Out the Dogs, God Only Knows,
BlindSide:
DownSide: This Disease, Your Fascination, Miracles

Listening Post - Gary Numan - Berserker

Gary Numan - Berserker - 1984

After 6 years and 7 albums Gary and Beggar's Banquet parted ways. Why not? They barely promoted the last album and the one before that only slightly more. How fickle this industry.
So he started Numa Records, went back in the studio and came out with Berserker.
How is it? Well, thank goodness all that jazz-electro fusion is gone. This is a big, bold heaping pile of industrial noise. Predating Nine Inch Nails by some time there is no way Reznor hadn't heard this record. A lot of synth musicians were playing around with these sounds, even Sparks found themselves so far in love with their keyboards that they got lost in a miasmic pit of redundant faux-industrial over-production.
Songs like "My Dying Machine" come dangerously close to sounding like Harold Faltermeyer but that was the sound of the times, yes? "Cold Warning" starts off promising but crumbles under the weight of it's own self-aware gravitas and length. Dammit, Gary, cut these tracks by about 90 seconds each, please! And when he does return to the bass driven jazzy sounds on "Pump Me Up" the whole affair just feels tired and dressed up to sound new but not original in any way
If there is any saving grace it's on "Child with a Ghost" a song Numan wrote for his deceased-by-overdose friend and original bassist, Paul Gardiner. "Child" is the most beautiful song Gary has recorded since his Telekon days. A piece of brilliance almost marred by a dreadful sax that appears about 3/4 of the way in.

Berserker - Gary Numan

Grade: C-
ASide: Berserker, Child with a Ghost
Blind Side: The Hunter, My Dying Machine
DownSide: Pump it Up, Cold Warning

Listening Post - Gary Numan - Warriors

Gary Numan - Warriors - 1983

Wow is this bad. What happens if you're Gary Numan and you just made an album with a terrific fretless bassist (The Underwhelming I, Assassin featuring Pino Palladino) but you don't have that brilliant musician for your next record? You make another one just like but with less focus.
You look at that cover and you think, okay, Gary's gonna bring us back to that post-apocalyptic wasteland that we knew him for and loved. And the first track, "Warriors" starts off just that way. Then that bass comes back in...and it might as well be U, Assassin, too.
Worse is that for the first time Numan actually sounds like he's BEHIND the times. Other synth based New Wave pre-post-industrial bands are making music better than this and far more interesting (Flock of Seagulls for example. Trust me. Depeche Mode. Others.)
The damned sax is back to undercut just about anything good on this record. And by the time it ends I realized that there was nothing for me to grab hold of. It's just a series of pseudo-songs laid end to end and committed to plastic.
Warriors is as bad as it gets. Nu-electro-jazz be damned.
While there are some tracks worth listening to, the Dance-length "Sister Surprise", "The Tick Tock Man" and to some extent "Love is Like Clock Law" it's just so hard to listen to that voice pine and whine and beg not to be left alone. Gary's nasal-robot singing worked so well on those dystopian records of the late 70s but here it's just annoying.

Warriors - Gary Numan

Grade: D
ASide:
BlindSide: Sister Surprise, The Tick Tock Man,
DownSide: Everything else.

Listening Post - Gary Numan - I, Assassin

Gary Numan - I, Assassin - 1982

So, what happens when you take Gary Numan, introduce him to a genius fretless bass player, Pino Palladino, and tell him, “hey, it’s been a year and ‘Dance’ wasn’t that big a seller, we need a new record.”?
You get a weird mismatch of new wave and smooth jazz. It’s not that “I, Assassin” is awful, in fact what Numan is trying to do is build on the motifs he was exploring on Dance but he fell so much in love with Palladino’s playing that he just let the bassist and his instrument drive the songwriting and, well, all of the music.
The result is a tiresome and exhausting exercise in retreaded music each of which have the added benefit of being 2 minutes too long. I can just picture Gary in the studio, grooving to the jams led by his newfound genius (who would, in fact, go on to quite an illustrious career) and wanting it to never stop.
Sadly, someone really should have stepped in and put us all out of our misery.
It’s not that all the songs are “bad”. It’s just that they are not “good”. By any stretch. “White Boys and Heroes” tries way to hard to be David Bowie but we already have a Bowie, Gary, and you’re no Bowie. The faux blues on “The 1930s Rust” almost succeeds but I just couldn’t get past the harmonica. Harmonica! On a Numan record. Okay, points for working out of your wheelhouse, but detract all those points for marrying those sounds (fretless bass, world rhythms, harmonica) with that detached robot voice. Just can’t get past it.
Some songs just feel like holdovers from Dance, like “Music for Chameleons”. But most of it is just so uneventful that I forgot what I was listening to.
I, Assassin is the first album that makes me wonder if Gary has any ideas left or if the next 10 albums are going to be torture.

I, Assassin - Gary Numan

Grade D
ASide: The 1930’s Rust
BlindSide:
DownSide: A Dream of Siam, I Assassin, Oh, hell. Just about the rest of the album.