Review:

on 2011-04-16 CharlesMartel Said:

There are times I think this is their best album. At others, it seems like a logical place to stop on the way between "Script of the Bridge" and "Strange Times". That being said, it is still a great album, whatever my mood. However, it is the album of the Chameleons about which I feel most ambivalent. This is, I suspect, because the band comes as close as they ever did to flaunting with the new romantics. The production is too clean and the sound is rather lush in comparison with the neighbouring albums. Was their record company attempting to influence them to join the mainstream as happened so sadly with the Comsat Angels?

The result is a departure from the often oppressive, yet beautiful and despairing sound of "Script Of The Bridge". The album is equally haunting but the music is almost ambient rock by comparison - I know, that is a wildly unfair comparison. Even though it was the first album of theirs I got, it is the one of the early trilogy I can find the most fault with.

The sound is more tempered and the greater use of synthesisers provides more atmosphere. The production is not so rough at the edges and therefore lacks the aggression which made their debut such a stunner. The vocals and the drums are less prominent while the double rhythm guitars drive the sound much more, and the synths then add the dreamy effect. Not at all unpleasant to listen to, but it was something which took a bit of getting used to. It may have been a less intense listen than the first album, but it is not devoid of some superlative moments.

"Perfume Garden" is a good opener. It has some truly beautiful guitar work, executed with precision and skill which mirrors the yearning for a lost utopia of childhood and innocence which was, in truth, never really there at all. "One Flesh" is the closest the band come to new romanticism, but even there they hold back and deliver an indie rendition of guitars and dance. "On The Beach" rises in a crescendo to sparkling guitar lines and thumping drums. "Home Is Where The Heart Is" is at the same time beautiful and unnerving, strange and yet magisterial.

Politics again features in some of their best numbers, the politics of the early eighties and the destructive effect of Thatcherite conservatism swept across the post punk scene, driving Big Country, Billy Bragg and the Smiths as much as it did the Chameleons. Lyrically, "Singing Rule Britannia" and "Return of the Roughnecks" lay bare the fundamental falsehood of Thatcherite Britain - that the place in the sun is reserved only for the chosen few. The underclass will be left behind in their stagnant wastelands of bleak northern towns who, because they will always vote Labour, will never achieve what the rest of the country can. When the rest of the country was lurching from greed to over-indulgence, from selfishness to an almost breath-taking disregard for anyone but themselves, this message was as powerful as it was true. The adults are STILL FUCKING LYING TO YOU!!!!!!

My personal favourite was and remains "Looking Inwardly". Just listen to that guitar, cascading downwards with each line of the lyric. The result is a mesmerising song which leaves you drained with its power as the plaintiff calling of Mark Burgess echoes out across a haunting finale.

The Chameleons had produced a different album from their first, and had proved to all that they could lead from the front. The sad thing was that in a chart world dominated by the stupidities of a dickhead who plastered himself in make up and a bunch of poseurs who felt that lounging around in the sun with a bevy of starlets for a video, very few were following.
Rating: 9/10