30 You And Me Both - Yazoo

Purchased : June 1984

Tracks : Nobody's Diary / Softly Over / Sweet Thing / Mr Blue / Good Times / Walk Away From Love / Ode To Boy / Unmarked / Anyone / Happy People / And On

This was the first of a string of LPs purchased on cassette because I'd done something rather stupid. After I'd had my new music centre (a leaving home present) six months I decided it was time to change the stylus. The problem was that none of the stores in Leeds recognised the make and advised me to bring the old one in to see if they had something compatible. Therefore I put it in the sleeve pocket of my coat which I neglected to fasten up properly and consequently lost it (probably jumping around at football). And so I had no stylus at all for 6 months until getting the right one in the first shop I tried that autumn.

Although I liked Yazoo I had passed on this when it first came out in July 1983 because I already had the single - "Nobody's Diary" - and I was unduly influenced by John Shearlaw's one-star review in Record Mirror ( I should have remembered that he'd given five stars to albums by Renato and Bow Wow Wow earlier in the year). My interest was rekindled when Radio One did a series of one hour programmes on female singers one of which was on Alison Moyet and they played "Unmarked" which I thought was fabulous. Therefore when I saw the cassette in Bostock's , Leeds   for £2.99 I jumped at it.

This  was  Yazoo's  second  and  final  album  made  when  Vince  Clarke  and  Alison  Moyet  were  barely  speaking  to  each  other  and  their  split  was  announced  as  soon  as  the  LP  was  released. They  were  in  such  a  hurry  to  get  away   other  that  no  further  singles  were  taken  from  the  LP  and  this  album  became  one  of  the  decade's  forgotten  chart-toppers  despite  each  party's  subsequent  success. The  cover  art, chosen  by  Moyet,  of  two  Dalmatians  snarling  at  each  other  couldn't  be  more  apt  with  echoes  of  McCartney's  copulating  beetles  on  the  cover  of  Ram. If  Clarke  and  Moyet  had  been  a  romantic  as  well  as  musical  partnership  this  would  have  been  the  synth-pop  Rumours . As  it  is  only  one  song  directly  addresses  the  problem  but  there  are  hints  all  over  the  place  in  these  mostly  bleak  songs.

There  are  no  joint  credits  here, Moyet  having  six  songs  to  Clarke's  five  and  so  the  LP  is  bookended  by  Moyet  songs. First  up  is  the  single  "Nobody's  Diary"   with  Moyet  pleading  with  her  man  to  keep  the  relationship  going  and  using  every  wile on  him-  "Perhaps  if  I  held  you  I  could  win  again". Clarke's  inventive  arrangement  with  the  brittle  staccato  opening  giving  way  to  melodic  rushes  makes  it  hard  to  credit  they  mostly  avoided  going  into  the  studio  together.

Clarke's  "Softly  Over"   covers the  same  sort  of  emotional  territory  but  it's  bleaker ; the  lover  has  gone  and  isn't  there  to  hear  the  simple  "Understand  me "  plea. It's  based  on  a  simple , high  pitched  synth  motif  with  crashing  bass chords  at  the  start  of  each  verse  to  express  the  crushing  finality. The  middle  eight  introduces  O  Superman  vocal  loops  and  the  Gothic  synth  sound  from  Joy  Division's  Decades  for  emphasis.

But  it's  not  all  doom  and  gloom. On  Moyet's   "Sweet  Thing "  they  remember  that  they're  a  feted  dance  act  particularly  in  the  US  and  deliver  a  Hi-NRG  disco  romp. Moyet  is  again  being  deserted  but  brays  her  defiance  "It's  your  day  now  but  it's  gonna  be  mine ". Clarke  moves  things  along  with  little  slashes  of  synthetic  brass  but  the  track  goes  on  a  little  too  long.

Clarke's  wonderful  "Mr  Blue" follows ; there  are  distinct  echoes  of  "Only  You "  in  both  tune  and  arrangement  but  it's  a  great  song  in  its  own  right  and  reached  number  one  in  Holland  in  1993  when  covered  by  an  AIDS-ridden  singer. Clarke  imagines  himself  as  the  personification  of  melancholy,  an  inhabiting  spirit  like  Bob  from  Twin  Peaks  on  the  hunt  for  hosts  as  they  contemplate  the  onset  of  winter, famine  at  Christmas  time (in  a  wierdly  prescient  second  verse) , war (this  was a  year  after  the  Falklands  conflict)  and  yet  again. desertion. Moyet's  vocal  is  beautifully  controlled  resisting  the  temptation  to  embellish  when  presented  with  a  melody  that  doesn't  tax  her  too  much.

Side  One  closes  with  Moyet's  "Good  Times "  a  fiesty  song  which  follows  on  from  Green  Door  and  Neil  Sedaka's  Standing  On  The  Inside  as  the  expression  of  an  outsider's   wish  to  join  the  party. Moyet's  breathless  vocal  and  Clarke's  abrasive  synth-brass  riff work  together  to  suggest  she's  not  after  tea  and  cakes  when  she  gets  there. The  fat  girl  wants  sex  and  won't  be  denied   although  the  brutally honest  lyrics  "I'm  a  bargain  honey  I'm  a  give  away "  express  an  uncomfortable  truth.

Side  Two  starts  with  Clarke's  "Walk  Away  From  Love"  where  the  main  synth  riff  bears  a  distinct  resemblance  to  Just  Can't  Get  Enough  though  the  song  itself  is  far  less   brash. This  time  it's  Moyet  doing  the  deserting  though  in  the  chorus  she  sings  the  part  of  her  partner  pleading  for  her  to  stay. There's  a  Kylie  Minogue  Shocked  controversy  about  the  second  verse  where  she  may  sing  "run  to  a  place  where  you  can't  fuck  me " although  ""find  me" rhymes  with  the  previous  line. Perhaps  Clarke  is  trying  to  say  in  song  what  he  couldn't  in  face-to-face  conversation.

Moyet's  "Ode  To  Boy"  is  unabashedly  about  Clarke  and  her  dfficulty  in  understanding  what  made  him  tick. It's  the  slowest, bleakest  track  on  the  album  with  a  sparse  metallic  sound  which  focuses  attention  on  the  stark  lyric - I  watch  as  he  weeps  unaware that  I'm  in  awe  of  his  despair" . Clarke  closes  the  song  with  single  note  simulations  of  Oriental  percussion  reminiscent  of  Japan's  similarly  naked  Ghosts . Moyet  would record  an  acoustic version in  the  90s but  this  is  the  superior  take.

Clarke's  "Unmarked"  takes  us  away  from  personal  matters  for  a  post-Falklands  rail  at  militarism.  The  song  is  built  around  a  tortuous  deliberately  undanceable  rhythm  topped  off  with  pistol-crack  percussion  that  occasionally  breaks  into  a  military  tattoo. If  the  lyrics  are  rather  simplistic  Moyet  invests  them  with  enough  conviction  in  her  delivery  to  silence  the  cynics  and  Clarke himself  provides  the  wordless  lamentation  that  forms  the  chorus.

"Anyone"  sees  Moyet  retreating  to  her  room  for  the  sort  of  bedsit  introspection  with  which  Suzanne  Vega  would  shortly  be  making  a  killing. Reflecting  on  a  dismal  one-night  stand  she  retreats  to  her  imagination. Clarke  hovers  in  the  background  sympathetically  with  synthetic  triangle  and  marimba  sounds  before  returning  to  the  O  Superman  vocal  loops  for  an  eeerie  middle  eight.

Clarke  signs  off  with  "Happy  People"  which  he  also  sings, his  Everyman  voice  well-suited  to  a  barbed  lyric  about  mindless  hedonism. This  of  course  came  out  just  after  Margaret  Thatcher's  first  past  the  post  "landslide"  election  victory  in  June  1983. The  music  reflects  Clarke's   veiled  fist  approach  with  a  stabbing  riff  underneath  the  sugary  glockenspiel  melody  on  top. The  line  "Sometimes  we're  on  TV  when  we're  over  69"  may  be  a  reference  to  Thatcher's  soulmate  Reagan  which  might  explain  why  the  track  was  replaced  by  the single's  B-side  "State  Farm"   (very  similar  to  "Good  Times")  for  the  US  release.

The  final  track  "And  On"  from  Moyet  is  fittingly  enough  about  a  funeral. Ostensibly  Moyet  is  singing  about  not  being  able  to  grieve  for  a  young  friend  but  really  when  she  sings  "I'm  so  glad  that  your  life's  gone  now  before  it  had  the  chance  to  die "  it's  clear  that  she's  calling  time  on  the  project. Clarke  bangs  and  swoops  around  its  Vienna- like  rhythm  but  you  sense  it's  not  his  favourite  song  and  he  provides  no  coda. Almost  as  soon  as  Moyet  finishes  singing  the  word  "die"  they're  gone , a  brief  but  highly  rewarding  chapter  in  the  story  of  pop  coming  to  an  abrupt  end.

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29 It's My Life - Talk Talk

Purchased : 5 March 1984



Tracks : Dum Dum Girl / Such A Shame / Renee / It's My Life / Tomorrow Started / The Last Time / Call In The Night Boy / Does Caroline Know / It's You




If you look back to the review of The Party's Over you'll realise why this was the most eagerly anticipated LP in my collection, bought in Leeds on the Saturday morning of the week it came out. They'd also made me wait for it releasing only a single in 1983. This was partly due to a personnel change ; as soon as the tour for the first LP ended they parted company with keyboard player Simon Brenner opting not to permanently replace him. They released a single "My Foolish Friend" in March 1983, ironically a Brenner co-write,. but it stiffed at 58 through lack of airplay (part of the video was actually filmed in Littleborough but I didn't find out about it until after the event). The lead-off single and title track fared a little better in January 1984 in terms of airplay and chart position but still fell short of the Top 40.





Inevitably perhaps I was a little disappointed by this one at the time and it took a while before I learned to love it. I missed Brenner's Gothic mellotron sound , thought the introduction of acoustic percussion was a concession to current pop trends and found Tim Friese-Greene's production a bit too squeaky-clean. I was also a bit disappointed by the lack of a lyric sheet, Mark Hollis not being the clearest enunciator in pop.



Phil Ramocon's piano chords lead straight into the mantra-like chorus of "Dum Dum Girl" the first of three songs co-written by Friese-Greene and it's presumably him responsible for the rather screechy keyboard sound that spoils this mournful song about prostitution.It establishes the new sound of the band, busy percussion from Morris Pert, upfront fretless bass from Paul Webb, a greater variety of keyboard sounds from Friese-Greene and Ian Curnow and a sparing use of guitar from new Pretender Robbie McIntosh and Mark Hollis himself. The chorus also makes good use of one of their secret weapons, Webb's backing vocals. It was the third single release from the LP limping to number 72.

"Such A Shame" was a big hit in mainland Europe reaching number one in Switzerland but as usual faltered over here peaking at 49. It's inspired by Luke Rheinhart's novel The Dice Man where the central character makes important decisions by tying alternatives to numbers on a dice. It begins ominously with a low drone over the percussion and elephant calls in the background and you wonder just what the stakes are. It's richly textured with Webb's probing bass the lead instrument and has a number of increasingly quiet false endings , a little prophecy of the sound of their final albums.

"Renee" is a long slow ballad of despair that returns to the themes of "Mirror Man" and "The Party's Over" from the first album. Renee is an abused and ageing woman observed by Hollis with an extraordinarily careful vocal. Beginning again with percussion , Pert is soon joined by a limpid guitar line from McIntosh and questioning bass from Webb. The drums only come in on the chorus and there's a sad trumpet from Henry Lowther in the middle eight that betrays Hollis's love of Miles Davis.

The first side concludes with the title track , finally a UK hit (their biggest ) on its third release in 1990 by which time they had ceased to operate as a conventional band. Eschewing the slow build up of the previous two tracks we're straight into the song here with Hollis seemingly the wronged party in a relationship but unable to break free. Unlike in The Animals song of the same name , the title is a cry of despair not affirmation backed by those glorious chords in the chorus that make the song so addictive.

Side Two begins with "Tomorrow Started" an impenetrable relationship song but whose despairing tone is all-pervasive from the slow torture of the dragging beat to Hollis's pain-wracked vocal particularly on the line "they never seem to be any use". The line "See my eyes, tell me I'm not lying" is copped from Split Enz's "I Got You" a dark song itself but nowhere near as hopeless as this one.

"The Last Time" is a Hollis co-write with keyboard player Ian Curnow which perhaps explains why there's a major key keyboard refrain for the first time on the LP but it soon gives way to a brooding verse , Webb's bass prowling with suppressed violence. Hollis is playing the victim card again ; when he cries "Bring on the clown" it's clear who he means.

"Call In The Night Boy" is the last song to be co-written by all four original members (and had appeared in a voice and piano only version on the B-side of "My Foolish Friend" ) . Here it's beefed up to become the nearest thing to a rock song the band ever recorded with Webb and Lee Harris combining to produce a pulsating rhythm and McIntosh punctuating proceedings with PiL -like distorted guitar. It's a surprise therefore when the middle eight gives Ramocon a chance to shine with a jazzy piano solo. The lyric can be interpreted two ways but given the aggression in the music I favour that Hollis is telling his girl to go and make her booty call to someone else.

"Does Caroline Know" is the one song I'm still not keen on. I don't like the cloying Beach Boys referene in the title or the sardonic screech of the keyboards. Webb also veers too close to Pino Palladino territory wobbling away for the sake of it. Lyrically Hollis shifts to a me culpa "breaking every pledge I've made" and with a different arrangement I'd love it.

"It's You" the closer is a powerful song again referencing the Beach Boys with the "God only knows " line. The verses bristle , Hollis's vocal quavering with indignation as he contemplates evidence of his girl's infidelity then the chorus explodes with self-deceiving anger as he decides it's all lies and accuses the messenger -"It's you". The Gothic keyboards in the middle eight hark back to the first album then we're left with Hollis endlessly repeating the chorus line "Why let lies about the girl bother you" in increasing desperation as the truth closes in.

I still don't put it on a par with "The Party's Over" but bands need to evolve and this one is pretty close to being a masterpiece itself.

28 Construction Time Again - Depeche Mode

Purchased : 5th Jan 1984

Tracks : Love In Itself / More Than A Party / Pipeline / Everything Counts / Two Minute Warning / Shame / The Landscape Is Changing / Told You So / And Then / Evertyhing Counts (Reprise)

This was purchased from W H Smith's in Bradford on a rather aimless Day Rover excursion during the Christmas break.

This was Depeche Mode's third LP. Their second will eventually crop up here but I missed it at the time due to its short stay in the charts (and consequently the discount range) and my ambivalence about its third single. It was the the first album to feature Vince Clarke's replacement, Alan Wilder and the consequent broadening of their sonic palette is immediately obvious. While not a concept album as such , there's a thematic unity to the songs basically saying we're growing up and taking stock of the world around us.

And so the first song "Love In Itself" is almost an apology from Martin Gore for being preoccupied with love on his earlier compositions. It was the second single from the LP and not particularly successful peaking at 21. It's a sombre song, initially based around a nagging one-note synth motif with a synthetic brass riff on top but then changes tempo for verse and chorus and the middle eight introduces acoustic piano and guitar to their music for the first time. Wih no obvious hooks it wasn't destined for Top 10 success but it's an impressive statement of intent particularly the mournful synthesised trumpet coda at the end.

Then we're straight into "More Than A Party" with its swamp rock bassline. Gore's message that there's more to life than mindless hedonism isn't startlingly original but Dave Gahan as ever delivers it with great conviction. It doesn't go anywhere very interesting musically and the silly speeded -up ending almost acknowledges that.

Gore takes the lead vocal for "Pipeline" an earnest tale of working on a Third World immigration project. It starts off like Kate Bush's "The Dreaming" with a slow dragging beat but then introduces a Japan-like Oriental melody along with strange ping pong ball noises. The sound is filled further in the second verse by more synth lines and Gahan's backing vocals which continue into the closing mantra "Taking from the greedy giving to the needy".It's ambitious but quite successful.

Side One closes with "Everything Counts" one of their best-loved singles which mingles nursery rhyme synth melodies with hip hop rhythms. Gahan sings the verses and Gore the chorus which makes for an effective contrast and Gore provides an impressive melodica solo. For all that it's not a favourite of mine because the lyrics are so clunky; rhyming "career" with "Korea" is abysmal and makes their toytown critique of capitalism rather laughable.

Side Two begins with one of two Wilder compositions "Two Minute Warning" a rather vague anti-nuclear song with an interesting hoarse vocal from Gahan and twitchy New Order-ish synths. The second half of the song is instrumental allowing Wilder to build textures and employ a piston-like drum sound.

"Shame" returns to Gore's guilty conscience about world problems set to a clockwork rhythm and atonal blasts on a recorder. It's let down by the clumsy refrain "It all feels so stupid it makes me want to give up but why should I give up when it all seems so stupid" a piece of circular logic whose absurdity is only highlighted by Gahan's conviction.

Wilder's second contribution "The Landscape Is Changing" is an early eco-hymn set to a throbbing bassline with more synthetic brass lines. The chorus proves that the new boy was just as prone to nursery rhyme simplicity - "take good care of the world" as Gore. Again the instrumental fade is quite lengthy with an obvious debt to Kraftwerk.

The vaguely apocalyptic "Told You So" is the only track that harks back to the Clarke era with its driving dance beat and melodic synth riff. Again the lyrics are poor from the toe-curling reference to Jerusalem in the first line to the "higher/church spire" and "Suited/diluted" rhymes later on. It's a shame because the arrangement is excellent with synthetic clarinet on the middle eight and judicious use of Blue Monday choral synth to punctuate the chorus.

"And Then" might have been a better choice for the second single , a sort of I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing for the synth generation. Brooding verses with Gahan at his most plaintive lead in to an appealing group chorus with Pale Shelter acoustic guitar shimmers and glockenspiel melodies. The naive lyrics are charming rather than annoying.

The album closes with a brief reprise of "Everything Counts" which emphasises its nursery rhyme quality.

Like the New Order album earlier in 1983 this is really a work-in-progress towards their peak sound. Gore's lyrics would eventually improve but here they're a major weakness derailing the band's obvious wish to be taken more seriously. It's a decent album without obvious highs and lows but not essential listening.

27 Unknown Pleasures - Joy Division

Purchased : 28 December 1983

Tracks : Disorder / Day Of The Lords / Candidate / Insight / New Dawn Fades / She's Lost Control / Shadowplay / Wilderness / Interzone / I Remember Nothing

This was bought with Christmas money in Manchester.

This of course was Joy Division's debut LP originally released in 1979 although it only charted in the wake of Ian Curtis's death the following year. Fewer of these tracks featured in the John Peel Festive Fifty compared to Closer so it was a riskier purchase from my point of view.

By and large this is more of a rock record than Closer with a greater role for Bernard Sumner's guitar and a punky anger on many of the tracks that had burnt itself out by the time of the follow up. Nevertheless producer Martin Hannett still makes his presence felt, sculpting the band's sound and taking them into new sonic territory. It's not easy listening ; there are no synth melodies to balance out tuneless dirges like "Candidate" and "I Remember Nothing" ; the synths are there to provide unsettling texture not melodic warmth. This is the sound of pre-regenerated Manchester in 1979, a decaying Victorian industrial powerhouse haunted by the ghosts of the recent past. Its young intellectuals were seduced not by the fantasy of Tolkien but the likes of J G Ballard, the prophet of bleak futures just around the corner.

Perhaps Ballard is the "guide" Ian Curtis is singing of in the compelling opening line of "Disorder" which powers along on Peter Hook's rollicking bassline. It's a classic song of urban alienation with references to "cars crashing" and "the tenth floor" (possibly of Hulme's infamous crescent of high rise flats , scene of a Joy Division photo session and a stone's throw from the club that hosted the original Factory nights). Steve Morris provides a crisp drumbeat throughout while Bernard Sumner throws in a couple of ragged and rudimentary guitat solos. Throughout, there are strange washes of sound ebbing and flowing in the background almost like whalesong or perhaps strange echoes of industrial sounds formerly heard in the disused factories in the area.

"Day Of The Lords" is much slower with a grinding ominous bassline and fractured guitar backing Curtis in full-on Jim Morrison mode. The song seems to be about bleak youthful sexual encounters but the references to "the bodies obtained" and "the car at the edge of the road" inescapably bring to mind Manchester's other Nazi-fascinated Ian, still alive in Ashworth Hospital down the M62. The synths screech in to accompany Curtis on the disturbing refrain "Where will it end ? " . It's possibly their most frightening song despite the bathetic line "Withdrawal pain is hard, it can do you right in" one of the occasional lapses into Manc-speak that had been cut out by the time of

Closer.



Then comes "Candidate" a song I've never learned to love. Gradually fading in from a quiet start the music is very sparse , a dragging beat with intermittent interjections from Hook and Sumner and jarring sounds evocative of vehicles passing nicked from Autobahn . Curtis tunelessly intones in a sedated mumble lyrics which seem to be a comment on his failing marriage -We're living by your rules, that's all that we've known".



"Insight" is comparitively sprightly once it emerges from a lenghty ambient intro full of pre metal-bashing industrial noises, Morris's crisp beat augmented by Love Don't Live Here Anymore syn-drums. Instead of a conventional chorus it has two passages of scattershot synth noises over a punishing one-note bassline recalling Pink Floyd's Astronomy Domine. The title is a bit of a tease since the lyric is elusive although the line "But I remember when we were young" alarmed his wife at the time.



She didn't like the next track, "New Dawn Fades" either, actually confronting him about the meaning of the lyric although not getting the answers she was seeking. This is a recognised classic; I recall John Peel introducing it for the Festive Fifty in 1981 (it was in the top 5) with the words "By a terrible irony most of the requests I received from Poland were for this song " (martial law having been imposed to counter Solidarity the previous month). It starts off sounding very similar to "Candidate " but then Hook imposes himself with a determined bassline and Sumner overlays a tortuous slow solo before Curtis comes in. The first verse is calm and measured climaxing ominously with the line "A loaded gun won't set you free - so you say" but the second gets angrier with each line culminating in Curtis holding on the word "Me -ee- ee" for a devastating two bars pregnant with accusation. No wonder Deborah didn't like it.

Side Two kicks off with another of their best-loved songs "She's Lost Control" a sort of tribute to an epileptic client of his at the employment office who died in her sleep. According to Deborah Curtis the incident disturbed Ian so much they'd wait up half the night for Ian to have a seizure whilst fully conscious. Starting with an isolated beat, Morris then uses the chattering drum sound from Pink Floyds "Pow Row Toc H" and a snare drum that sounds like a ping pong ball when he hits it to create a very odd percussive track over which Hook lays down one of his most melodic and mournful basslines. Sumner's work on the track is punky thrashing well suited to the subject matter. Curtis comes in with oceans of echo and unidentifiable background chunter caught between pathos and admiration as the girl "walked upon the edge of no escape and laughed". As the song winds up the snare is distorted further by Hannett to sound almost like a lost child's cry.

"Shadowplay" is a great driving song with its propulsive bassline and a lyric not too far removed from Iggy Pop's The Passenger. The intriguing second verse with its "assassins all grouped in four lines dancing on the floor" is possibly inspired by T S Eliot's Murder In The Cathedral . Whatever it's one of Curtis's best vocal performances switching from a weary mumble to a sonorous exclamation on the line "I let them use you FOR THEIR OWN ENDS !"

"Wilderness" is like a post-punk update of Itchykoo Park borrowing the "What did you see there " line but Curtis is envisioning the centuries of religious warfare and of course it's all too horrible. With its queasy, lurching bassline and Sumner's Andy Gill-esque guitar slashes this is a challenging listen but it's quite brief.

Stylistically "Interzone" is the joker in the pack. A survival from their early days as Warsaw, the music is a punk update of NS Porter's Northern Soul classic Keep on Keeping On and lead vocalist on the track is Peter Hook (doing a passable imitation of Pete Shelley) with Curtis singing alternate lines as a counterpoint until they concur on the line "I guess they died some time ago". The song title comes from William S Burrough's Naked Lunch (a not exactly-trumpeted connection to East Coast ironists Steely Dan here ) where the interzone was a sort of drug-fuelled dreamworld and the song's concern with looking for a friend in a dangerous landscape fits.

I never look forward to the end of this LP because the last track "I Remember Nothing " is irredeemably a dirge (at nearly six minutes long) with Curtis's vocal aggressively tuneless in a way that recalls Patti Smith at her most challenging. Neither the sludgy bass or Sumner's guitar give any melodic relief, there's just a sustained synth chord (a pale echo of Rick Wright on Shine On You Crazy Diamond) to sweeten the pill. There's also a Floyd influence in the occasional sound effect of glass breaking , the first instance of which is quite startling. The repetitive lyrics aren't up to scratch either; I'd be surprised if this was anybody's favourite JD song.

This is a review I've enjoyed doing. I've always thought of this LP as a bridesmaid to Closer and played it a lot less but I've found new things in this process and could well be returning to it more often.

26 Present Arms - UB40

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Acquired : 23 December 1983

Tracks : Present Arms / Sardonicus / Don't Let It Pass You By / Wild Cat / One In Ten / Don't Slow Down / Silent Witness / Lamb's Bread

This was the fourth of Helen's joint birthday/Christmas presents.

This was UB40's second album and therefore before the post-Red Red Wine bland out. I think most readers will have a fair idea of UB40's sound, the reggae rhythms, punchy brass, rudimentary keyboards, reliance on Brian Travers' sax for most of the melody and of course, Ali Campbell's Jamaican-inflected vocals. I can't describe the dub effects or interpret Astro's toasting properly so please use the comments box to tell me what I've missed.

We kick off with a military drum roll, a parade call then an assertive brass riff leads into the title track, a bleak satire of army recruitment campaigns some years ahead of Public Enemy's "Black Steel". The line "You'll be your mother's pride and joy" recalls "Enola Gay". It's a Faustian bargain ; trade in your humanity for an escape from the dole queue and the urgency of the music gives it real punch.

"Sardonicus" slows things down as electronic percussion and an ominous sax riff lead us to a shared vocal about presumably a politician with a fixed smile. The title refers to the medical condition leading to a fixed grin (often associated with tetanus). Its two verses are both repeated to get the point across then there's a lengthy instrumental passage complete with an unassuming guitar solo before the track fades out.

"Don't Let It Pass You By" is the longest track , the first half of which was released as one side of the first single ahead of the LP. There's a lengthy intro before Ali comes in to warn of the dangers of waiting for utopia, whether religious or not. The band's unassuming keyboard player Mickey Virtue comes to the fore here with some questioning synth chords then an idiosyncratic little solo. After a repeat of the second verse a sudden brass intervention brings the music to a temporary halt and Ali gives way to Astro who begins toasting to the same backing as before. Astro's repeated instruction to "burn two spliffs" seems at odds with not letting things go by. Most of his toast seems to be describing the sound of the band although the latter part has political references notably an allusion to the New Cross fire earlier that year which killed a number of black children and wasn't interpreted as a racist attack by the police.

Side One ends with "Wild Cat" a pacy instrumental led by Travers' insistent questioning sax. UB40 don't provide answers and the track fades out without resolution.

The second side kicks off with the second single "One In Ten", it's urgent bounce and frequent sax breaks preventing the check list of human misery in the lyrics from becoming too turgid. It's closing guitar solo expresses the anger at the reality behind the statistics but it also draws a line under their most militant music and the rest of the LP pursues a mellower groove.

"Don't Slow Down" was the other side of the first single and also concerns living for the moment but where "Don't Let It Pass You By" is strident , this is laid back with a warm, lazy groove. Campbell is observing the hectic lives of others from a position in the rear rather than instructing.

"Silent Witness" maintains the mellow tone with a drowsy shared vocal observing the nightscape of Birmingham where the ignored homeless roam the streets amid occasional violence. Ali rouses himself for a solo verse about the shop dummies coming to life and fleeing the scene (unlike Kraftwerk's clubbing mannequins) but it comes across as mournful and defeatist rather than challenging.

The closing track is Astro's paean to marijuana "Lamb's Bread" by far the most upbeat track on the LP. Lyrically it's ambivalent with Aatro noting "Thiefing, looting, lying, me seh dep pon the street" and if legalisation is seen as the answer it's not obvious from the words. The last verse is just an exhortation to the bass player the album concluding with the words "B-line".

We'll come to UB40 again and it's hard to pick a favourite from those I've got but this is certainly in the running.

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25 No Parlez - Paul Young

Purchased : 22 November 1983

Tracks : Come Back And Stay / Love Will Tear Us Apart / Wherever I Lay My Hat / Ku Ku Kurama / No Parlez / Behind Your Smile / Love Of The Common People / Oh Women / Iron Out The Rough Spots / Broken Man / Tendertrap / Sex

You may have noted a bit of a hiatus between this and the last purchase , the reason being entirely practical i.e the caution of a fresher without huge parental resources seeing how far his grant (remember them ?) would stretch. This was actually bought from a stall selling cassettes in the Union Building at Leeds University for £2.99. It was also my first "percentage purchase" LP in that I knew I wouldn't like all the tracks but wanted at least two of the songs in my collection. One was the cover of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" ; at the time I was struggling to reconcile Catholic teaching with having a libido so a song which appeared to be about impotence (the lyrics being clearer on Young's version) came as a comforter. The other was the title track which I'd heard on one of Peter Powell's LP chart rundowns.

Which reminds me that this was a monster LP in its time having four separate runs at number one in 1983-4 despite lukewarm reviews. And yet Young's time at the top was very brief; just three years later his singles were struggling to make the Top 30 while Mick Hucknall ran away with the white soul crown. Tom Ewing in his review of "Wherever I Lay My Hat" mentioned how this LP was the most oft-relinquished LP of his time working in a record exchange store in the mid-90s and I can well believe that. While not attracting the same opprobrium as contemporaries like Howard Jones and Nik Kershaw, Paul nevertheless didn't manage to escape being associated with the naff pop prevalent in the mid-eighties.

His cause wasn't helped by the presentation of his solo debut. Having made a cult-y name for himself as the energetic frontman of sweaty soul revue band the Q-Tips he looks distinctly uncomfortable trussed up in an Anthony Price leather suit on the cover. Then there's the production ; Laurie Latham seems determined to distract you from hearing Paul's prime asset , his honeyed Paul Rodgers-like voice - by throwing in every contemporary sound he can think of and elongating some of the tracks to ridiculous lengths. If an album's too exhausting to listen to at one stretch that's another reason to give it away.

The first track is a case in point . "Come Back And Stay" the second big hit from the LP is nearly eight minutes long here. Originally a brief guitar thrash by US garage punk band The Nerves Paul reinvents it as blue-eyed pop soul, acceptable enough in single form but damned annoying when stretched out with hip hop drums, scratching effects, intrusive backing vocals, tubular bells, speeded -up voices and the burbling fretless bass of Pino Palladino fresh from imitating Mick Karn for Gary Numan.

Next up comes "Love Will Tear Us Apart" at a relatively acceptable five minutes. Having learned to love the original in the intervening years I'm now embarrassed about ever thinking this was the superior version. Young uncoils a very tightly -wound song and flattens it into an arid slab of stadium rock with clod-hopping synth drums and a galloping bassline that prefigures the awful King. Young himself sounds hammy rather than emotional. It finishes with some very-dated Fade To Grey spoken vocals from Dagmar Krause. It's awful, let's quickly move on.

Next we have six minutes of his breakthrough hit "Wherever I Lay My Hat" . Undeniably Young did a good job in replacing the chauvinistic bravado of Marvin Gaye's rather throwaway original with a regretful mea culpa and was duly rewarded with his only number one single but this version means we have to put up with that gurgling bassline for twice as long.

"Ku Ku Kurama" is the first original on the LP written by his guitarist Steve Bolton (otherwise severely under-employed on this LP). The phrase is apparently meaningless and so is the song. Young surrenders this one completely to Latham who buries him in tricks and a severe over-helping of his chavvy backing singers the Fabulously Wealthy Tarts who do mock - Oriental "Me I know nothing" responses over a plodding beat.

It's then a relief that "No Parlez" stills hold good. Originally an obscure song by prog rocker Anthony Moore about marital breakdown, Young turns it into a gothic tour de force. The production is still too much with completely unnecessary scratching effects but the song is compelling enough to transcend its setting. The chorus is a relentless massed chant of "You hate your children to rise, still you put the hammer in the hands of the children" with Young ad libbing over the top to great effect. For once , a few splurges in the middle eight apart, Palladino sounds in thrall to the song, his twists and turns complimenting the mental tortures of the protagonist.

Immediate disappointment follows with "Behind Your Smile" a Young co-write with former Q-Tips organist Ian Kewley. A tuneless misogynistic song delivered over ceaseless electronic percussion chatter, the only enjoyable bit is a brief Hammond solo towards the end.

Side Two carries on where we left off with an extended version of Young's lukewarm take on Nicky Thomas's "Love Of The Common People". It's the most faithful of the covers but doesn't really suit his voice, Young gabbling his way through the lyric though mercifully not attempting a Jamaican accent. After two timewasting minutes of Linn drum and vocal effects ,the song proper bumbles along on top of faux-ethnic glockenspiels - the sound favoured by uncelebrated contemporaries, the Thompson Twins.

The misery continues with "Oh Women" another song by Nerves mainman Jack Lee. It only lasts three and a half minutes but that's more than enough. The lyrics are utterly vacuous , Palladino and the Tarts are at their most intrusive and it has some of the ugliest keyboard sounds of the decade. The sudden ending is a great relief.

Then we have seven and a half minutes of "Iron Out The Rough Spots" an obscure Booker T and the MGs song. With those glockenspiels to the fore again this sounds like The Thompson Twins do Lee Dorsey complete with occasional Rock Lobster keyboard squeals. And typing that makes me realise that that's who the Tarts are aspiring to be with their "kooky" interjections. Needless to say they fall well short of the mark.

Some relief now appears with "Broken Man" a Young/Kewley composition brought over from the Q-Tips. Here, Young and Latham invoke the spirit of another British singer from a decade earlier, Colin Blunstone, dismissing band and tarts for a synthetic string setting. Young takes the opportunity to soar vocally (and distract from the clumsy words) but he hasn't Blunstone's litheness. Nevertheless it's a welcome interlude.

Another Kewley/Young composition follows with "Tender Trap" by far their best song. It musters a nice sense of urgency greatly helped by Palladino's apparent absence and more or less keeps the Tarts under control. Two plaintive trombone interventions by Rico Rodriguez put a quality stamp on the track and belatedly show what a genuinely sympathetic musician could have added to Young's music. It's just a pity the track is marred by the horrible drum sound.

The album's late rally ends abruptly with six and a half minutes of the execrable "Sex" (the last and least of Jack Lee's contributions). It encapsulates everything that's wrong with the LP as a whole - a non-song (vaguely reminiscent of Heaven 17's "Play To Win" ) with trite lyrics, produced to within an inch of its life with a new sound or production trick with nearly every bar. I can honestly say it's one of the worst pieces of music in my collection. And Young should be ashamed of himself for recording a line like "You'd better give me what I want cause that's what I've been waiting for ".

I suppose three good tracks for £2.99 isn't bad value but it did introduce some seriously bad music to my collection.

24 Closer - Joy Division

Purchased : 1 July 1983

Tracks : Atrocity Exhibition / Isolation / Passover / Colony / A Means To An End / Heart And Soul / 24 Hours / The Eternal / Decades

This was purchased appropriately enough in Manchester on the way to an open day at Preston Polytechnic, necessary because the campus in Poulton-le-Fylde I'd been to in January for the entrance interview was closing down that summer.

It wasn't without some trepidation that I put it on. Would the songs that sounded so compelling at low volume in December have the same impact on a sunny evening in July ? Or, since a reconciliation with my estranged friend Michael was already being arranged at this point , would my previous loathing for them be re-established ?

The album opens with "Atrocity Exhibition" a track anchored by Steve Morris's drum clatter with an insidious mixed-down bassline and churning guitar noise forming the backdrop to Ian Curtis's visions of Hell, a visit to a Victorian mental asylum, a Roman circus and possibly the Holocaust. At regular intervals our complicity is invited - "This is the way step inside" . This can be taken as an invitation to the rest of the LP - one man's private torments unveiled for those with the stomach to see it through. Curtis's voice now sounds vulnerable - the stentorian Morrisonesque baritone wobbling and cracking - given nowhere to hide by Martin Hannett's dry as tinderwood production.The title comes from a book of self-contained prescient pieces by JG Ballard about the effects of mass media events on the individual psyche although it's believed the lyrics were completed before Curtis actually read the book.

Talking of Ballard the next track "Isolation" brings to mind his other contemporary disciples in pop, John Foxx and Gary Numan. It would sit very easily on the former's "Metamatic" album released earlier in the year with its rigid metal beat, skittering synthesisers and bald repetition of the title as chorus. Stylistically it's a bit at odds with the rest of the LP but helps disprove the notion that Joy Division were working in a vacuum away from other influences. Lyrically Curtis mines the seam of childhood trauma that Tears For Fears would take to the top of the LP charts three years later.

"Passover" is a provocative title for a band criticised for flirting with Nazi imagery. The dry sound of the first track is back but the band sound enervated as if they're just waiting for Morris's relentless beat to stop. The sparse backdrop allows Curtis's lyric to take centre stage with that amazing declaration "This is the crisis I knew had to come destroying the balance I'd kept" an opening line like no other in rock music. We'll never know whether he's referring to his marital difficulties or the worsening of his epilepsy though the line "Back out of my duties when all's said and done" suggests the former.

Throughout the track he sounds weary and parched ; this is someone who's not expecting to find any manna in the desert.

The next two tracks let the rest of the band off the leash with Sumner's Pil-like guitar prominent and allowed a brief mournful solo at two points in "Colony". Hook and Morris serve up a brittle but aggressive rhythm that defies any melodic construction, Curtis summoning up his best Jim Morrison howl as he decries the surrender of a child to a mental asylum , a deep-seated fear for anyone with a mental health complaint. We know what sort of colony he has in mind here ; the word doesn't need to be uttered.

"A Means To An End" allows Peter Hook , rather constrained elsewhere , to lead the track with a trademark descending bassline. With its sledgehammer beat and fractured guitar it has a rather Gang of Four feel to it. Curtis returns to a writing style found more on the first album using rhyming couplets on this song which seems to be an epitaph for his marriage particularly the last verse about retirement to warmer climes "Where dogs and vultures eat" although the tone is mournful rather than contemptuous.

Side Two is not without its angry moments particularly on the second track but overall there's a more placid reflective feel to the music. We know that it's the most dreadful peace of all that he's got in mind and its intriguing that the rest of the band go along with this although Tony Wilson said on a Factory documentary that Curtis's mistress Annik Honore was alarmed by the recent lyrics and he dismissed it as Art.

"Heart And Soul" kicks it off , Hook's bass full of foreboding soon joined by low frequency synths and Morris's unrelenting drums. Curtis comes in with copious echo which makes him sound like he's intoning the grim mantra "Heart and soul, one will burn" from some monastic ruin far from the Manchester studio where the others are anchored. There's now a fatalism in the lyrics -"Existence well what does it matter" that gave Honore justifiable cause for concern.

"Twenty-Four Hours" is a remarkable song for the band's (in particular Hook) empathy with the lyric, paraphrasing the despondency of verses two and four with plangent bass and sparse drums then thrashing about with hopeless fury in the more purposeful verses one, three and five. There's an astonishing beauty in Curtis's naked "Oh how I realised how I wanted time " as Hook descends the scale behind him.

"The Eternal" is a synth-driven ballad taken at funereal pace with Hook's bass prodding a Gothic synth drone into life. Every other beat is a processed splash in the sea of rustling synth noises out of which a plaintive electric piano melody sometimes emerges. Curtis sings as softly as his baritone allows of watching presumably a funeral procession pass by his house "possessed by a fury that burns from inside" . The last few lines of the song seem a mournful recollection of childhood spent in the garden in blissfully purposeless action.

That seems like the end but we have another track to go. "Decades" begins with the same catching drum sound as Pink Floyd's "Pow R Toc H" then a rhythm guitar leads into a harsh metallic synth riff. Curtis enters early , announcing the arrival of young men who've seen something terrible (the Allies at Belsen possibly) and realised the human condition - "We saw ourselves now as we never had seen" . After he's finished the Gothic synth is back heralding for the first time an OMD -like melody line over a rock drum beat and Curtis's sad refrain "Where have they been". This is abruptly curtailed for another short verse about enervation -"now our heart's lost forever" , then a final Gothic flourish before the chorus returns, Morris and the synths taking us out after Curtis's last line.

This of course was the end. There were compilations to come but Joy Division never entered a studio after this album was finished , Curtis's two last songs having to be recorded by New Order. It is of course part of " the Canon" and I'm not going to dissent from that. It cast a shadow over rock and pop which led numerous artists over the next two years - OMD, The Cure (twice), Teardrop Explodes, Echo and the Bunnymen, Ultravox, Japan, U2 - to attempt something similar and its shadow persists to this day, Young men and women of an intellectual persuasion still regard Ian Curtis as a sort of secular patron saint, the man who looked into the abyss and left a testimony for them.

It's not a record I always want to listen to but it never dates and thirty years on you can still be impressed by its vision, unique sound and the awful circumstances that gave birth to it. As the first record of my adulthood it was a damn good choice.