THE BOOMTOWN RATS: V DEEP (1982)
1) He Watches It All; 2) Never
In A Million Years; 3) Talking In Code; 4) The Bitter End; 5) The Little Death;
6) A Storm Breaks; 7) Up All Night; 8) House On Fire; 9) Charmed Lives; 10)
Skin On Skin; 11) Say Hi To Mick; 12) No Hiding Place*.
There are at least three different versions of
this album: original UK release, original US release, and a new CD reissue from
2005 with a strange choice of track reshuffling — for instance, the original
opened with the bombastic, Phil Spector-ish ʽNever In A Million Yearsʼ, but on
the reissue, the first track is the more chamberish (at least, in the first
part, until the big drums kick in) ʽHe Watches It Allʼ. Go figure. Also, the
first letter of the title is the Roman number five, not the letter V, alluding
both to the fact of this being the band's fifth album and the fact that they
were now a five-piece, as the band's guitar player Gerry Cott split off.
In the end, it looks like all these different
trivia about the album present more food for the reviewer than the music
itself, which continues Geldof's gradual slide into blandness, though without
exacerbating it. There is plenty to like on V Deep — just not much to rave about. In purely objective terms,
the album might even be preferable to its predecessor, because (a) the band
embraces an even larger number of styles, ranging all the way from lounge jazz
to synth-pop, but (b) the band does not engage in any particularly annoying
embarrassments, for instance, does not try to pass for a bunch of roving Africans
as they did on ʽMood Mamboʼ.
And yet, the overall impression is that they
continue to struggle in their attempts to grab our attention. It is hard to
understand why it is so — I mean, if you dissect the album's second single, ʽHouse
On Fireʼ, it is a pretty complex and (theoretically) catchy reggae number.
There's clicky percussion, quirky keyboards, jungle harmonies, a merry brass
riff in the bridge, some hidden menace in the descending melody of the chorus —
what's not to like? But something is clearly missing that could take the song
by the hand and lead it across the bridge that separates «decently written»
from «soul-inflaming». Perhaps that something is a general sense of purpose: as it often is with the Rats, I
am not getting what they want me to
feel and how they want me to go about
it. And I do not mean the lyrics (you
try and decipher what "she's cruel as a pig but we love her like a house
on fire" is supposed to signify), but more like the whole thing put
together. Is this an angry song? A sad song? An irony-drenched dance number?
With ʽMary Of The 4th Formʼ or with ʽRat Trapʼ or with ʽI Don't Like Mondaysʼ,
you wouldn't be asking these questions. With ʽHouse On Fireʼ, there's certainly
more questions than answers, and I seriously doubt that even Geldof himself
could answer most of these.
On the other hand, I still feel a bitter irony
that ʽHouse On Fireʼ, when it was released, charted higher (UK No. 24) than the
previous single, ʽNever In A Million Yearsʼ (UK No. 62), even though the latter
is a far superior song — along with the catchier and much more melodically dense,
but less serious ʽDon't Answer Meʼ by the Alan Parsons Project, it is one of
the decade's better Phil Spector imitations, driven by a tremendously
passionate Geldof vocal as he uses all the bombast to prop up his personal
manifesto: "I know I'll never let / Those self-defeating fears / Spoil
those golden years / These days that pass us by so slow". And even if the
main keyboard melody of the song is fairly simplistic, by concentrating on the
solemnity of the oath and the stateliness of the arrangements, they manage to
pull it off fairly well. But you probably wouldn't want to dance to it — and singles are for wiggling your butt, not for
standing upright and holding your hand out in a respectful salute to your idol,
so the fussy, but pointless reggae bit won over the slow, ponderous, but
meaningful wall-of-sound exercise.
Other than that, they are actually all over the
place: bass-heavy, fast-paced synth-pop (ʽTalking In Codeʼ), acoustic-based,
finger-poppin' light jazz entertainment (ʽLittle Deathʼ), bombastic art-funk
(ʽA Storm Breaksʼ), another Talking Heads clone song (ʽCharmed Livesʼ) and so
on. The only thing that ties them all together is the same puzzling effect as
the one on ʽHouse On Fireʼ: it's all laid out to be good, but somehow, it isn't. The darkness ain't dark enough, the
madness ain't mad enough, the humor ain't humorous enough, and all the musical parts,
taken separately or collectively, do not transform into grappling emotional
hooks. You can clearly see how much ʽCharmed Livesʼ owes to Remain In Light — but you do not sense
the same «grim determination» that made Remain
In Light such an epoch-defining masterpiece. Perhaps it is simply the
result of poor coordination within the band: where all the individual Heads
were clearly able to «get» Byrne's artistic intentions, here everybody seems to
be simply playing the notes, not much more. You kind of get the feeling that, just
like Gerry Cott who finally had had enough, all these guys would only be too
happy to go back to their «pub-rock» days of the mid-1970s and just bash away
with simple, but effective rock'n'roll. But they are not given the permission.
In time — in a very long time — some of the
songs may grow on me, and if you throw in Geldof's ongoing search for new
feelings and occasionally irritating, but still frequently insightful lyrics, V Deep is certainly not a total
failure. But neither is it a misunderstood masterpiece, and on the whole, the
fact that the Boomtown Rats were rapidly losing in the great war of New Wave Innovators
is pretty hard to deny: their commercial decline was not due to the fact that
the music was much too complex or challenging for the general public, but
actually more due to the fact that the public ceased to feel the spark. And now,
more than thirty years later, I, too, have a certain difficulty locating that
spark.
Great. Well written. Exactly what I was looking for. Thank you.
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