Tom Tom Club: Dark Sneak Love Action

TOM TOM CLUB: DARK SNEAK LOVE ACTION (1992)

1) Love Wave; 2) Sunshine And Ecstasy; 3) You Sexy Thing; 4) Who Wants An Ugly Girl; 5) Say I Am; 6) Irresistible Party Dip; 7) Dark Sneak Love Action; 8) Innocent Sex Kiss; 9) Dogs In The Trash; 10) My Mama Told Me; 11) As The Disco Ball Turns; 12) Daddy Come Home.

General verdict: The one Tom Tom Club album with a definite edge to it, even if the label reads «creepy dance-pop for the age of Basic Instinct».

Pretty much the only thing you can very easily dig up about this album from Internet sources is that it includes a cover of Hot Chocolateʼs ʽYou Sexy Thingʼ — which, in all fairness, only makes sense to those who were of the right age when ʽYou Sexy Thingʼ was a thing in 1976. Apparently, after the lackluster performance of Boom Boom Chi Boom Boom most people in the world came to think the most sensible thing — that Tom Tom Club was a limited-time joke act, that its time had expired, and that following the musical future of Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz in the next decade would be the epitome of the Losing Game.

These most people, though, they couldnʼt be more wrong. Dark Sneak Love Action, an album totally and completely buried in time, is actually... Tom Tom Clubʼs best album. Mind you, the stress here is on album. It does not contain any immediate gems like ʽWordy Rappinghoodʼ, it cannot boast a single track with the hit potential of ʽGenius Of Loveʼ, and I do not even think there are that many hooks here on the level of ʽSuboceanaʼ. But it sets itself a perfectly clear and interesting goal — write a cycle of sexy, seductive, sublimely naughty dance tracks — and carries out the prescribed task in twelve moves with nary a single obvious miss. And if ever there was an album title in this groupʼs history to perfectly match its musical content... well, guess what, it certainly wasnʼt Boom Boom Chi Boom Boom.

Compared to their previous records, this one was recorded in very small company: Tina and Chris are accompanied by guitarist Mark Roule and keyboardist Bruce Martin, plus a couple backing vocalists — no Byrne, no Jerry, no Belew, just a very barebones edition of Tom Tom Club left completely to their own devices. Maybe because of this, precisely, they really stick to just one device: get a good dance beat, set up a dark, suspenseful, mischievous funk vibe, and use all the limited instrumental and vocal means at their disposal to build up an atmosphere that suggests dark corners, dirty winks, casual encounters, illicit substances, adultery, and all sorts of kinks a-plenty. If the album had just a wee bit more recognition in its time, I am pretty sure somebody would have come up with the idea to license it for the soundtrack of a «Middle Aged Couple Seduces Innocent Teens» porn movie or something.

One might play the puritan and find such a purpose disgusting, or one might play the highbrow intellectual and find it ridiculous and cheap, but the record does have a unique flavor — it isnʼt overtly sexy, with its reliance on heavy bass grooves, whispered vocals and innuendos, itʼs more like an album for some really really shy people with some really really gross hidden desires. Actually, you will not notice anything particularly indecent going on if you just browse through the lyrics, even the ones for songs with really suggestive titles such as ʽInnocent Sex Kissʼ; itʼs all in the little details of singing, arrangements, and production. But in the end, youʼll still walk away feeling dirty and ever so slightly shocked — I mean, we all had our suspicions, but we never thought thereʼd be that much of this kinky stuff in Tinaʼs and Chrisʼ basement.

Speaking of individual songs, like I said, there are no clear highlights, but almost each title has something going for it. ʽLove Waveʼ is a slow, cocky, funky rap embellished with a few surf guitar lines (is «surf-funk» actually a thing?) to metaphorically remind you of all the oceanic connections of sexual attraction. ʽSunshine And Ecstasyʼ, the first single from the album, is arguably one of the weakest numbers, being closer than most other songs to generic early 1990s dance pop, but even that song is quirked up by stealing the guitar riff of ʽYou Really Got Meʼ and inserting a fun jazzy piano break in the middle. ʽYou Sexy Thingʼ actually sounds nothing like the original, being given a synth-pop edge and a whiff of stalkerish atmosphere by means of Tinaʼs ghostly-mechanical falsetto vocals. ʽWho Wants An Ugly Girlʼ chooses a reggae beat to tell a simplistic, endearing narrative that would most likely be tabooed in 2020, but possibly lets us in on some of Tinaʼs personal complexes — with a catchy chorus to boot.

Skipping ahead to a couple of songs that are particularly juicy, the title track is arguably the culmination of this style — all hush-hush, herky-jerky percussion, quiet bubbly synth riffs in the background, menacing blues-rock lead guitar lines roaming on the edges, and backing vocals with purring curves. The songʼs message is basically the same as Madonnaʼs ʽBurning Upʼ ("strip me down and burn me to the core"), with the important distinction that Madonna is offering herself to you right in front of everybody in the middle of Times Square, whereas Tina is doing that in the darkest, most secluded corner of the club, away from the lights and crowds — itʼs up to you to decide which of the two approaches is hotter, even if in the long run both are probably fatal. At the other end of the spectrum is ʽDogs In The Trashʼ, a hilariously corny «nightmarish» account of a jilted lover stalking a socialite (or something like that), with the howling dog trope exploited both vocally and instrumentally (if that ainʼt a Termenvox providing the main counter-riff, it sounds damn close to one).

It is possible that the consistent dark-sneak atmosphere might wear you out by the end of the album, but somehow they never ever run out of little ideas to help get you going — right down to the very las song, ʽDaddy Come Homeʼ, which is graced with... bagpipes, marrying together the old Celtic folk vibe with contemporary dancefloor rhythms. Seriously, more care and inspiration went into the making of this record than into most of David Byrneʼs solo albums from that same period — Dark Sneak Love Action is a light-art pop piece with a purpose, and it should be holding up rather proudly next to hundreds of completely generic dance-pop products of the time. Too bad they pretty much gave up on it: ʽYou Sexy Thingʼ was the only number, I think, that they regularly performed live for a while, and it isnʼt even the most representative track from the record. Then again, if it is largely a «dark corner» record, maybe Tina and Chris just gather in secret to perform these tunes for each other every once in a while. (There definitely is quite a bit of potential here to spruce up a middle-aged coupleʼs sex life, thatʼs for sure).