THE CHAMELEONS: WHAT DOES ANYTHING MEAN? BASICALLY (1985)
1) Silence, Sea And Sky; 2)
Perfume Garden; 3) Intrigue In Tangiers; 4) Return Of The Roughnecks; 5)
Singing Rule Britannia (While The Walls Close In); 6) On The Beach; 7) Looking
Inwardly; 8) One Flesh; 9) Home Is Where The Heart Is; 10) P.S. Goodbye; 11*)
In Shreds; 12*) Nostalgia.
Some critics ardently defend this record,
insisting that its similarity to Script
Of The Bridge is superficial, and that in reality it manages to surpass its
predecessor in scope, depth, taste, and any other qualities that separate Art
from Arse. Perhaps they are really thorough and accurate people, capable of
seeing something that I fail to see even after three or four listens; honestly,
though, while I do perceive slightly cleaner production and a bigger role
allocated to synthesizers (as seen already on the brief lead-in instrumental,
ʽSilence, Sea And Skyʼ, so ethereal that I keep waiting for it to break into
the Twin Peaks theme at any moment),
I am not sure that these changes necessarily improve on the impact of Script,
nor do I succeed in observing any other visible improvements in melody,
arrangement, lyrics, or vocal deliveries.
Overall, things stay the same: what we have
here is nine more examples of «average» songwriting where intelligence and
restraint are greatly valued over raw emotional expression, thus damaging both
the band's commercial potential and, I am afraid, the artistic as well: too much
Apollo, not enough Dionysus. The band's intentions remain admirable: few people
in the music business circa 1985 were able to spell out everything that was
wrong with life in the UK (and, by extrapolation, in the whole wide world) this
articulately — ʽReturn Of The Roughnecksʼ and ʽSinging Rule Britanniaʼ, sitting
back-to-back in the middle of the album, are, in theory, fabulous anthems of
impending doom on both the personal ("I'm a working class zero / Chained
to the tree of life") and the social ("Vices embraced in times of
crisis") levels. But something about these songs still makes them stop
just short of brilliance, and I cannot easily decode what it is.
Perhaps it is the production, after all — a
special style of Eighties production that reduces all melodic ideas, no matter
how excellent, to the same common denominator: with big drums and delayed
guitars dominant on each and every song, two or three numbers into the album I
am already showing signs of being worn down. This is precisely where the situation
might be saved with a super-class singer like Bono or Morrissey or a
super-class guitar player like The Edge or Johnny Marr, people that are able to
transcend the limits of generic, monotonous production; Mark Burgess and his
guitarists cannot transcend it, not even with briefly attention-attracting
gimmicks such as quoting ʽShe Said She Saidʼ at the end of ʽSinging Rule
Britanniaʼ (so that, once again, instead of feeling
the music, you begin sending signals to the logical part of your brain, trying to
understand what these two songs might have in common).
On a positive note, even in purely musical
terms, these are good songs. Even if they still tend to rely upon fast-tempo
chug-chug-chugging riffs much too often, they are still more complex than the
average chainsaw buzz rhythm track, and sometimes include mood-shifting key
changes that can take the song in a completely different direction — note, for
instance, how the angry, fuzzy verse riff of ʽSinging Rule Britanniaʼ is
replaced by a cleaner, more «heavenly» (or psychedelic) riff of the bridge
section. The eight-bar riff of ʽLooking Inwardlyʼ is one of the simplest and
catchiest musical phrases they ever came up with, and I cannot help wondering
how it would have sounded in Paul McCartney's hands — then the song
unpredictably slows down for the second half, and becomes a soft dirge,
punctuated by melancholic single-note lead guitar howls (yes, looking inward
can be quite painful for the looker, we know that). Even their synth-centered
songs are creative: ʽHome Is Where The Heart Isʼ progresses in mid-tempo
«waves» of synthesized sounds washing each other off the table, instead of
merely providing a monotonous adult contemporary background.
Nevertheless, you know something's not right
when you literally have to screw your ears into the sound in order to
appreciate the band's songwriting and musicianship: unless this Eighties sound
is like mother's milk to your organism, now that the surprise of discovery is
no longer there and things become rather safely predictable, Mark Burgess'
depress-poetry is not enough to overcome the basic effect of boredom. And,
perhaps even more importantly, by 1985 they were outdone on all fronts by The
Smiths — who had better musicianship, better production values, a far more
gripping frontman, and totally comparable poetic skills, while at the same time
aiming for similar emotional impressions. Of course, The Smiths had bigger
egos, too; but hey, rock'n'roll has always been your basic playground for big
egos from the days of Little Richard, so I am not going to automatically prefer
The Chameleons just because Mark Burgess is tactful enough not to shove his broken
heart right in your face.
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