Seeing as I’ve only got this on 12” (OK, I’ve got it on mp3 now, but for the purposes of the exercise let’s pretend it’s still this morning), we broke with tradition and watched it on YouTube. Consequently, Junior considers the song a mere soundtrack to Julian Cope’s hair and leather jacket. She liked both.
So that’s two Crucial Three-ers in a row, but we won’t complete the set because Echo and the Bunnymen didn’t release any singles in 1986. Jules was another eccentric with a bye into the charts in the 80s, and who can be surprised when he was chucking out taut, smart, pop triumphs like this?
Junior went off to school murmuring, “Shut your mouth, shut your mouth”. Great.
Now we know it’s 23 years ago. You wouldn’t find a crazed-eyed maverick like Pete Wylie in the charts today, ranting his own agenda and making music so vast it thumbs its nose at categorisation (although I imagine iTunes will say ‘rock’). And that’s a bad thing, believe me (“I wish you’d believe me”). We don’t need Cowell-spawned dinky-Robbies and mini-Mariahs, we need lunatics, and not just slightly odd people like the Black Eyed Peas.
For all that, ‘Sinful!’ is fairly straight, just bold beyond its arrangement. It wasn’t a fluke either, as Wylie and Wah! flirted with modest chart placings for over a decade. Then Britpop came and everything interesting died.
That’s hyperbole. Pete would like hyperbole.
And there’s still room for him, if Junior’s a yardstick. She sang along with the closing “it’s sinful”s and when I asked her, “Is it sinful?” she said, “Yeah”.
Our budding Lester Bangs in the backseat admits, “I liked David Bowie better.” And, well, that’s the sane response, isn’t it? She does clap along to the first few bars, but interest soon wanes as if we’re acting out Duran Duran’s career in microcosm. Five minutes later they’re releasing Public Enemy covers and Junior is into Suede.
This is where Duran Duran put their “We want to sound like Chic crossed with the Sex Pistols” money where their mouth was, and came out sounding like, erm, Hipsway. But credit where it’s due, it has some funk and a nicely rearranged ‘Union Of The Snake’ chorus, and full marks for actually trying. With Andy Taylor jettisoned, they no longer needed to pull shoddy rock shapes and could get on with working that groove.
Bowie did it, I did it, Junior did it, Junior 2 did it. We all BA-BA-BA-OOOOed. And with this werewolf howl we bid adieu to Good David Bowie Records, ‘Absolute Beginners’ just about sneaking under the wire thanks to a tune, some Liberace piano and at least a semblance of effort. Junior said her favourite bit was the saxophone ad-libbing at the end, and that’s a shrewd choice – it lends some ‘Whole Of The Moon’ glee to the affair, some devil-may-care euphoria.
Ah, the soul boys of the 80s. Even the NME, in 1985, was ranking What’s Going On as the best album of all time, before they decided old albums didn’t mean shit unless they directly influenced The Stone Roses. This edict has topped the commandments for 20 years and counting. Anyway, the soul boys of the 80s. Hipsway, sporting towering piles of Brylcreem, were formed by ex-Altered Image and future Texan Johnny McElhone but were all about gorgeous, pouting singer Skin. Well, Skin and – on ‘The Honeythief’ – a Chic riff that could carry a song alone. The 12” extended mix which, unusually for an 80s version, doesn’t rely (exclusively) on an elongated drum fill to pad it out, shows the riff in all its clipped glory and can be frugged to below.
Junior liked “the tune and the singing”, which has to be a ringing, riffing endorsement. But it wasn’t all gravy – the word “honeythief” sparked gales of laughter. Not so cool now, Skin.
Sure, I was born on the Yorks/Lincs border, but The Housemartins were a little too northern for me. By five I was in Berks, six Herts, and that’s where I stayed ‘til university. I’ve been lucky too to avoid the forced bonhomie of the rubbish post-work drink, “celebrated” here, what with my feckless career only carrying me to fun working environments where a cheeky half is with good company.
So what’s it doing here? I only bought it on impulse as part of a four-single box set at the end of 1986 (with ‘Caravan Of Love’ – a bit too Flying Pickets for me – ‘Flag Day’ and ‘Sheep’) and promptly gave the whole package to a girl I fancied, as a Christmas present. It didn’t work. Anyway, I had it on Now 7 too, so no great loss, and always liked its skittish bop and brevity. I grew to like the band more as they morphed into the yards better Beautiful South, though. Oh, it also had Furniture’s ‘Brilliant Mind’. Now 7, that is.
Junior listened, cogitated, ruminated and revealed, “It makes my shoulders go funky.” Which is a refreshingly compact way to describe a refreshingly compact record.
Junior laughed at the song title, then added, “It’s not funny, really.” And she’s right. We’re all going to hell in a handcart; Wallinger knows it, but he’s fo’ sho’ not going down with the rest of us plumbs. Rather winningly, he tells us this with the trusty implements of a dead catchy tune and some killer “ooo-ooo-OOO”s that Junior sings along with.
While Mike Scott was gazing at the whole of the moon, Karl was concerned with more earthly matters. Mainly matters like getting grumpy about not receiving full credit for his swirling synths, but also the fact our planet was on the brink of disaster. It continued to teeter on the edge on 1990’s superb Goodbye Jumbo album (which I’ve lost – so if anyone fancies sending me a copy, be my guest) and 1993’s ‘Is It Like Today?’ where even God was wondering, “How did it come to this?”
Well, it’s in more trouble today, Karl (and God), so can you lend a hand, please?
Aside from a few “lovely and brilliant” throwaways, Junior’s leading response to this was some zesty air guitar. There is some muscular soloing, but ‘Life’s What You Make It’ is about the big-fingered piano riff and Talk Talk’s new, ambitious, spacious, jazz-flirting sound. The Colour Of Spring album is the tantalising halfway house between the band’s synth-pop roots and the nearly ambient, breathtaking vision of Spirit Of Eden, the 1988 piece that wrapped commercial suicide in a startling prog-jazz overcoat. Give them their due – not everyone can carry off a prog-jazz overcoat.
Here, Talk Talk still make concessions to pop with almost-choruses and that catchy piano thump, but the shift has already happened. Critics’ fave Spirit Of Eden was not the bolt from the blue we’re led to believe; more than a couple of The Colour Of Spring’s meditative moments could flit between the two albums. The question is, did the band even lose something in their stubborn retreat from the pop fray? For me, it’s hard to pick between the two. It’s like asking if I prefer one daughter to the other. Well, it depends which day it is.
