AZTEC CAMERA: LOVE (1987)
1) Deep & Wide & Tall;
2) How Men Are; 3) Everybody Is A Number One; 4) More Than A Law; 5) Somewhere In
My Heart; 6) Working In A Goldmine; 7) One And One; 8) Paradise; 9) Killermont
Street.
One thing that is hard to deny about Roddy
Frame: the guy definitely had no big love for standing in the same spot long
enough to slip into formula. High Land
was a fusion of classic pop with New Wave attitudes, and it worked. Knife was a fusion of classic
«singer-songwriterism» with Eighties-type Knopflerisms, and it didn't work. And
now, three years later, comes Love,
a fusion of dance-pop with adult contemporary. Predictions, anyone?..
Predictions can be wrong, though. While, upon
first listen, this sounded awful, subsequent immersion showed that the
«sellout» actually helped Roddy with his creative juices. And, technically
speaking, this was a major sellout: no less than six different producers, most
of them coming from mainstream markets, worked on the project, which also
featured a completely different session band, with a host of musicians hired
specially for the sessions and then going their separate ways again. The songs,
however, were still written exclusively by Roddy: this is one area where the
corporate machine was strictly forbidden to enter.
Because of its dependence on generic dance
rhythms and fairly bland musical arrangements, Love generally tends to get flack from fans. But remember the
contrast between High Land and Knife and realize that, whatever the
side effects, Roddy generally works better when the songs are upbeat and
rhythmically stimulating; drag him down into the world of slow tempos and heavy
moods and he will quickly lose his focus and forget about everything but the
lyrics.
Even assuming that most of these songs are bad (which they are not), Knife certainly did not have anything
of the caliber of ʽSomewhere In My Heartʼ, a certified Aztec Camera classic
that justifiedly hit #3 on the UK charts, going much higher than the far more
«contemporarily-arranged» singles from Love,
because sometimes people actually go for intensity of delivery instead of the
production trinkets — and Roddy's "somewhere in my heart there is a star
that shines for you..." is pretty intense. The arrangement, with its
simple synth patterns and sax blasts, is nothing special, but it never detracts
from the hooks. It's a simple, but intelligent, solid, powerful love song that
should be able to proudly walk into anybody's pop collection.
As for the rest of this stuff, well, it depends
on where one draws the line between catchiness and tastelessness. For instance,
ʽEverybody Is A Number Oneʼ and ʽOne And Oneʼ certainly have infectious
choruses, but whether these are benevolent or malicious infections is hard to
determine. Both songs try so doggone hard to get you «on your feet» with their
artificial party atmosphere that it quickly becomes irritating — particularly
on ʽOne And Oneʼ, with its call-and-response vocals. I do like the arrangement
on ʽEverybody...ʼ, with its funky guitars, horns, and «synth-vibraphones»
meshing quite colorfully, but it still might be a bit too overtly «joyful» — on
the other hand, it seems as if Roddy were consciously going for a
power-to-the-people-ish Lennon vibe on this number, sacrificing a bit of good
taste to keep the blood boiling, and I respect that.
It is the slower-moving ballads on which «Roddy
the Aztec» seems to be really losing his grip, slipping into adult contemporary
clichés, or, at least, writing melodies that are hard to distinguish from such
clichés. Stuff like ʽHow Men Areʼ and ʽParadiseʼ tries to create a brand of
Roddy-soul that requires very close
inspection to distinguish it from contemporary R'n'B-ism. There are some
acoustic guitars to keep the live-sound lovers happy, but overall, the synthesizers
are overbearing, the hooks are mediocre, and the ideas behind the songs do not
warrant the presence of an individual singer-songwriter. If there is something
that makes Roddy Frame different from George Michael — and there must be! — it is not immediately obvious
on these songs.
Even so, it does not prevent him from ending
the album on a very high note — ʽKillermont Streetʼ, along with ʽSomewhere In
My Heartʼ, is the only other reason to own and cherish Love. Ironically, it is also slow and draggy; but the acoustic
guitars are uncluttered by cheesy synth overdubs, and it succeeds very well
where ʽKnifeʼ failed — by being a lot shorter, a little faster, a tad catchier,
with a nice vocal melody resolution, and seriously more optimistic.
These two songs are «classic Aztec Camera», the
perfect embodiment of Roddy's «well-tempered optimism» that ties together
suffering and hope through awesome vocal work where you don't even need to
learn the lyrics to get the message. No matter how weak or atmospherically corrupted
the rest of the tunes are, these two are the anchors that manage to color the
whole experience, and, since my brain loves them both and refuses to get
irritated by the rest of this stuff, altogether, Love demands a modest thumbs up. Which is good, because where would we
be if we all started giving love our
thumbs down? Aww.
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