The Associates Albums (4)
What The Critics Say
Although Howard Hughes continued to work with Billy Mackenzie, providing the excellent piano that appears throughout the album, Wild and Lonely, more than any other release before it, was essentially a solo album with a supporting cast of about 20 different musicians. Other performers included studio pros J.J. Belle on guitar and Guy Pratt on bass, plus Art of Noise core member/freelance arranger Anne Dudley handling the string performances. Following up the unreleased Glamour Chase album, it was something of a mixed delight; while Mackenzie's voice remains the pure and wonderful thing it always was, parallels to Bryan Ferry's later solo career suggest themselves. There's some of the same relative musical ennui, where everything is perfectly pleasant but rarely striking. Even more distressing, more than once, said music is little more than late-'80s glossy yup-funk that is singularly unappealing in its boredom, often saved only by Mackenzie's performing bravura and nice production touches ("Fever" would be dull as ditch water without the lead piano, orchestrations, and abbreviated choir blasts). Happily, the worse moments don't define the album, and when at its best, Wild and Lonely serves up a fine selection of new Mackenzie classics. "Fire to Ice" starts the album with a bright, shining feel, the relative gloss of the song offset by the strings and marvelous chorus. "Just Can't Say Goodbye," in feel echoing the similarly titled "Never Can Say Goodbye" as remade by Gloria Gaynor, is Mackenzie at his showstopping best, a song that combines Broadway theatricality and Euro-disco sheen in a way that only the Pet Shop Boys could rival. Particularly fine vocals from Mackenzie unsurprisingly run riot, especially in the closing section of "Where There's Love," working with backing singers excellently, and "Ever Since That Day." Concluding with the late-night smokiness of the title track, Wild and Lonely is imperfect, but with brilliant flashes nonetheless. ~ Ned Raggett, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
The edition of Sulk which was the most common to find while record shopping throughout the late '80s and '90s was originally the American issue. Heavy substitution and track reordering -- a typical enough move on the part of American companies no matter what the act -- resulted in a radically different record. For some strange reason, the European CD issue of the album relied on this American edition, something only finally rectified as part of an overall reissue program in 2000. All this said, while this second edition sacrifices some of the quirky edginess of the original, collecting all the major hit singles that made the band such a distinctive U.K. chart presence in the early '80s certainly isn't a problem at all. The three tracks from the second side of the original album -- the bizarro funk of "It's Better This Way," the swooning hyper-romance of "Partyfearstwo," and the nervy, sped-up rush of "Club Country" -- here lead off the record, followed by the OK-enough remake of Diana Ross' "Love Hangover" and the charming "18 Carat Love Affair." As for the remaining tracks, "Arrogance Gave Him Up," "No," "Skipping," and "Gloomy Sunday" are retained in a much different order, while "Bap de la Bap," "Nude Spoons," and "Nothinginsomethinginparticular" are removed in favor of early single "White Car in Germany" and "The Associate." All changes and switches aside, it's still very much the Associates at probably the best period of their career. Mackenzie's impossibly piercing cabaret falsetto rivals that of obvious role model Russell Mael from Sparks, while Rankine's ear for unexpected hooks and sweeping arrangements turns the stereotypes of early-'80s synth music on their heads. The bass work from ex-Cure member Michael Dempsey isn't chopped liver either, and the result is a messy but wonderful triumph no matter what version is found. ~ Ned Raggett, All Music Guide
'The Affectionate Punch'
Release Date 1/1/1980
Tracks 10
Label Fiction
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
All ten songs on The Affectionate Punch are nearly swollen with ambition and swagger, yet those attributes are confronted with high levels of anxiety and confusion, the sound of prowess and hormones converging head-on. It's not always pretty, but it's unflaggingly sensational, even when it slows down. Having debuted with a brazen reduction of David Bowie's "Boys Keep Swinging" to a spindly rumble, multi-instrumentalist Alan Rankine and vocalist Billy Mackenzie ensured instant attention and set forward with this, their first album. Mackenzie's exotic swoops cover four octaves, from the kind of isolated swagger heard in Bowie's "Secret Life of Arabia" to a falsetto more commonly heard in an opera house than a bar. (Dude sounds like a diva, so proceed with caution if you'd much rather hear a voice in line with PiL's John Lydon or Magazine's Howard Devoto.) Though the subject matter of the duo's songs would later veer into the completely inscrutable, there's some abstract wordplay here that scans like vocal exercises or Scott Walker at his most surreal: "Stenciled doubts spin the spine, Logan time, Logan time"; "If I threw myself from the ninth story, would I levitate back to three"; "His jawline's not perfect but that can be altered." Meaningful or not, there's always a sense of great weight. When Mackenzie runs through the alphabet in "A," he could be singing in code about the butterflies of love. Rankine, with help from drummer Nigel Glockler and a background appearance from then labelmate Robert Smith, covers most of the other stuff, specializing in spare arrangements that can simultaneously slither and jump, crosscut with guitars that release weary chimes and caustic stabs, as well as the occasional racing xylophone. Two years later -- a year after the genius run of bizarre singles collected on Fourth Drawer Down and the same year as the high-drama overdrive of Sulk -- Rankine and Mackenzie partially re-recorded and completely remixed this album to spectacularly layered and glossy effect. Get both versions. ~ Andy Kellman, All Music Guide
