Tag: New Wave

1986, Music

Blood and Chocolate (1986) by Elvis Costello and the Attractions

At some point a career goes on long enough where it starts to divide the true fans from the people who just got into the artist because they were in the ether, but sometimes the critics will continue to care and sometimes they won’t. I don’t know where exactly that point is with Costello but …

1981, Music

Penthouse and Pavement (1981) by Heaven 17

This is on the funkier, more organic side of British synthpop in part because of the instrumentation but also because of the songwriting. As such, it almost feels somewhere on the spectrum between synthpop and post punk, even though the attitude of this band is very much not something you would associate with post punk …

1981, Music

Dreamtime (1981) by Tom Verlaine

Marquee Moon is one of my favourite albums of the ’70s so this should be right in my wheelhouse. And it mostly is. Verlaine is a better songwriter than a lot of his contemporaries (with the notable exception of David Byrne), though he’s hardly an all time great. He has a good sense of melody, …

1981, Music

Fresh Fruit in Foreign Places (1981) by Kid Creole and the Coconuts

Coincidentally, I am listening to the first Dr. Buzzard record. (If you don’t know Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band was led by Kid and some of the same people.) Listening to this record, it’s clear that a lot has been learned since that previous band. Nearly everything is better here than on the Dr. Buzzard …

1981, Music

East Side Story (1981) by Squeeze

Can I admit something to you? I thought “Tempted” was from the ’60s. Of course, if I’d really listened to it, I might have noticed it wasn’t. But I became familiar with it when I was young and before I had an ear that could spot time and genre differences. And I guess I just …

2013, Movies

The Last Pogo Jumps Again (2013, Colin Brunton, Kire Paputts)

This is an exhaustive documentary about the Toronto punk scene in the late 1970s. It is nearly 3 and a half hours long -supposedly cut down form 5 hours – which means that it is probably only for people interested in the scene or in the history of Toronto. But if you’re interested in punk …

1981, Music

Trust (1981) by Elvis Costello & the Attractions

Some critics insist this is the best of the early Attractions albums and among Costello’s very best work. I haven’t listened to any of the other records, recently, however, and so I have a really hard time judging whether or not that opinion is correct.

1980, Music

Autoamerican (1980) by Blondie

I didn’t grow up with Blondie like I should have. With their biggest hits accessible enough for mainstream radio, and my dad buying a Greatest Hits record, it’s kind of weird I don’t know them better. But he bought that compilation in my mid teens and they were always too recent to be played on …

1980, Music

Double Fantasy (1980) by John Lennon, Yoko Ono

The dirty little secret about this record – if it’s even a secret – is that it was a failure when it first came out: it got bad reviews and it didn’t sell very well. People can write all they want about how it was John Lennon’s return after being a dad, or what have …

1980, Music

Love Zombies (1980) by The Monochrome Set

We all have things we like more than other things, that hit certain buttons or pleasure points. And the moment the title track started I was like “This is for me”. I love carnivalesque music in places where it shouldn’t be, for whatever reason, and the lead off track to an album by a band …

1980, Music

Kilimanjaro (1980) by The Teardrop Explodes

It’s funny what gets labeled “psychedelic”, especially when music wasn’t particularly psychedelic. I’ve never heard this band before – though I’ve heard Cope’s solo music but the label “neo psychedelic” really steers one the wrong way. Yes, it’s a spectrum, but this is pretty typical 1980 British post punk with a couple of major differences: …

1980, Music

Dirty Mind (1980) by Prince

Like so many artists’ early work, I’ve come to this Prince album backwards. And I suspect that a lot of my issues with it come from all the later Prince I’ve heard. Because, on first listen, this record just sounded like Prince in utero or, um, proto Prince.

1985, Music

The Head on the Door (1985) by The Cure

My general appreciation of The Cure keeps running into problems. The problem is that I had their singles collections for years and listened to them fairly regularly but didn’t get around to their albums until recently. And now I listen to them haphazardly: one from the early ’80s here, one from the mid ’80s there, …

1980, Music

Vienna (1980) by Ultravox

I understand that this album represents a fairly major change in the band’s personnel. I’m less sure about how much of a change in sound there was, which should tell you that I don’t know anything about this band. So I can’t say anything about where this fits in their history/evolution.

1980, Music

Searching for the Young Soul Rebels (1980) by Dexys Midnight Runners

If, like me, you are born after this record came out, you likely know one and only song by this band, “Come on Eileen”. (In North America, anyway. Their other biggest hit, the one from this record, was not a hit here.) Moreover, you’ve heard that song so much that you hate it and the …

1980, Music

Empty Glass (1980) by Pete Townshend

The story goes that Townshend was writing songs for both this album and the subsequent Who album and Daltrey at least feels like Townshend kept most of the good material for himself and gave the band the less good stuff. (I should point out I’ve never bothered with Face Dances because one thing I don’t …

1980, Music

Glass Houses (1980) by Billy Joel

I read somewhere that this is supposed to be Joel’s “punk” album, not in that it sounds like punk that it is his response. I think that comes from a way too deep reading of the lyrics to “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me”, and if it is indeed his response to these trends …

1980, Music

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (1980)

As I listen to evermore synthpop my dislike of the genre is falling away, as I realize that there are songwriters hiding behind the synthesizers, and electronic bass and drums, and the more I discover this, the more I like some of these bands. OMD are one of the innumerable ’80s British bands who were …

1980, Music

Get Happy!! (1980) by Elvis Costello and the Attractions

I don’t know Costello’s career as well as perhaps I should, given his sheer volume and his reputation as perhaps (British) New Wave’s preeminent songwriter. But I feel like I know it well enough to mark this as the first record when he began his genre-driving. It’s not as drastic as a departure as some …

1979, Music

Broken English (1979) by Marianne Faithful

Broken English is one of those records I heard so damn much about throughout my life that, by the time I listened to it decades after first hearing about, there was going to be a let down, it was inevitable. With multiple listens, the record is growing on me a bit, but it’s still worth …

1979, Music

The Pleasure Principle (1979) by Gary Numan

Gary Numan’s debut album continues where Tubeway Army’s final album left off; basically it feels like it’s nearly the logical conclusion of what their second album suggested: a fusion of Synthpop and New Wave that sounds far more like New Wave than virtually all other Synthpop music of the time.