The Smiths - The Queen Is Dead (1986)

1) The Queen Is Dead; 2) Frankly, Mr Shankly; 3) I Know It’s Over; 4) Never Had No One Ever; 5) Cemetry Gates; 6) Bigmouth Strikes Again; 7) The Boy with the Thorn in His Side; 8) Vicar in a Tutu; 9) There Is a Light that Never Goes Out; 10) Some Girls Are Bigger than Others

The Smiths hit parade. A band realising their talent after a shaky start and writing the songs that would be the base for their legacy. 

Key tracks: "Cemetry Gates", "Bigmouth Strikes Again", "There Is a Light that Never Goes Out"

The Queen Is Dead is maybe not The Smiths’ best (though I mainly say that because I seriously struggle ranking their albums), but it is their most solid release, something which has a lot to do with how it’s the one album where the band themselves are operating comfortably. They were still very wet behind the ears on The Smiths, Meat Is Murder is just messy as all the dominant egos are clashing and come Strangeways, Here We Come the band were already unravelling. Each of those states had an impact on the sound of the albums themselves: on The Queen Is Dead the band is in harmony, and so is the album.

The concept most associated with The Smiths is that of obnoxiously intelligent and narcissistically witty melodramatic romantics who’d create a swiveling pop song to charm you in a second, and that’s exactly the kind of album The Queen Is Dead. Morrissey takes stabs at political establishments, lovers both would-be and already-gone, his nemeses and himself, Marr plays some of the most heavenly guitar jangles known to man like it was the easiest thing in the world and the oft-forgotten Rourke/Joyce rhythm duo make a good case for why the backbone they provide is just as essential for the band as the other two guys. The Queen Is Dead is The Smiths at their purest: no distractions or experiments, just focus on what they were best known of. 

For a Smiths album The Queen Is Dead is shockingly consistent, both in quality and style. “Frankly Mr Shankly” and “Vicar in a Tutu” come closest to fluff, both being like short comedic interludes with tongue firmly planted in the cheek. But even they’re made out of the same elements that elevate the rest of the album and thus aren’t really a dip in quality – their brief levity is actually pretty fun.  The rest of the song selection runs the gamut from the rollicking rockers to the sweepingly dramatic melancholy, and everyone operating together at their respective peaks brings a tone throughout that makes the tracklist feel like it might as well be a best of. And it just as well could be: the title track, “I Know It’s Over”, “Cemetry Gates”, “Bigmouth Strikes Again”, “The Boy with the Thorn in His Side”, “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” and “Some Girls Are Bigger than Others” are all among The Smiths’ best cuts. That’s whopping 70% of the tracklist and even the one remaining track not yet listed, “Never Had No One Ever”, is pretty good. The presence of “There Is a Light that Never Goes Out” alone makes for a convincing case of The Queen Is Dead being The Smiths’ most essential record: it’s not just The Smiths’ best song but one of the greatest of all time in general, full of poetically morbid and self-awaredly ridiculous hopeless romanticism and with an absolutely pristine-perfect arrangement and performance to back it up. It’s the ultimate love anthem for all the people too cool to have love anthems.   

Meat Is Murder and Strangeways, Here We Come are more interesting as albums but The Queen Is Dead is the most instantly charming of The Smiths quadrilogy. It also stays that way and listening to further Smiths records rather just underlines how effortlessly lovely this one is. The only reason I’m not completely mad over it is, quite frankly, because The Smiths just never hit me on an emotionally personal level, like they do for many others: I admire, I appreciate and often I love but they never tug my soul like other acts do. But it’s easy to see why this has become their canon classic – it’s exactly what people want from The Smiths when they think about the band or read about their music, delivered in a fashion that perfectly matches their mythos.

Rating: 8/10

R.E.M. - Life’s Rich Pageant (1986)

1) Begin the Begin; 2) These Days; 3) Fall on Me; 4) Cuyahoga; 5) Hyena; 6) Underneath the Bunker; 7) Flowers of Guatemala; 8) What If We Give It Away?; 9) I Believe; 10) Just a Touch; 11) Swan Swan H; 12) Superman
1986 I.R.S. Years Vintage Edition bonus tracks: 13) Tired of Singing Trouble; 14) Rotary Ten; 15) Toys in the Attic; 16)  Just a Touch (Live in Studio); 17) Dream (All I Have to Do); 18) Swan Swan H (Acoustic Version)

More confidence, more muscle. R.E.M. kick up a gear and rock out.

Key tracks: "Begin the Begin", "Fall on Me", "Cuyahoga"

A cliche, sure - a rock band follows a subdued album with a firecracker. But Life’s Rich Pageant isn’t just about kicking the gear back into speed mode after the moody Fables of the Reconstruction. An arguably even bigger impact lies with R.E.M.’s chosen producer for the album, Don Gehman: a more mainstream name at the time than their previous producers and a carefully deliberated choice. The idea was to polish the band’s sound a little and give it that extra punch you’d expect from a higher profile release, without sacrificing what made R.E.M.’s music their own. A deliberate attempt was made to clarify and focus the band’s sound - some might say as a careful toe-dip into the waters of radio airplay, but I would say as a way bring everything out of the band’s evolving arrangements.

The thing that still jumps out first and foremost from Life’s Rich Pageant is how much of a powerhouse of an album it is. It goes 100 miles a minute heading here, there and everywhere, and it’s the first R.E.M. album which genuinely rocks. There is more muscle to these songs than ones of their kind on the previous albums, partly because of the production but partly also because the bulk of the songs themselves are very no-nonsense and directly punchy. All the flourishes are scattered in select parts throughout the album, which flicks from nature to nature at a moment’s notice: amidst the rockers there’s chaotic playfulness in the form of very off-kilter sidesteps, be it novelty covers or faux-tropicalia undertones, while the approaches taken with the subtler songwriting on Fables of the Reconstruction are still present, but re-tailored for the new approach. The production isn’t particularly incredible from today’s technical point of view, but there’s a marked difference to the previous albums, in particular the first two. There’s a clarity to the sound that hasn’t been there before, and in particular Stipe has been mixed particularly high for once; with him taking the front stage loud and proud for the duration of the whole album, there’s a brand new fire in the band’s belly as the front man no longer hides away among the instruments.

That certain kind of sonic haziness admittedly contributed something to the first couple of albums but I’m happy to take the trade-off between it and the sheer vigour that the band work with here. Life’s Rich Pageant lays its high-energy rock numbers constantly and consistently, and they’re not only a show of power but they’re such good fun to boot. “Begin the Begin” is probably the best of these and continues the tradition of iconic R.E.M. opening tracks, as it powerhouses through its constantly changing structure. It is effectively a rallying cry piloted by Berry’s pounding drums and Stipe’s increased visibility and charisma, and as has become tradition it’s a hell of an opener that lays down the album’s sonic base  Many of the album’s best parts similarly are its fastest, and they each have a little something different to offer. “Hyena” is raucous and hyperactive, “Just a Touch” is a manic shout-along that gives no respite (and goes completely hectic in its chorus, particularly with Berry’s drumming), “I Believe” has a smooth flow to it that gives it an elated feel and “These Days” is a bold, accelerating steam train. They all sound like they have come from a brand new band when comparing them to any more robust songs of the earlier albums, and as lush as those songs were, they barely touch the same force that’s present here. It’s an exhilarating set of songs.

In a typical R.E.M. fashion that’s not all that Life’s Rich Pageant has to offer, and in fact I’d have to say the album’s two most iconic cuts - or at least my very favourites - are from the entire opposite end. “Fall on Me” is a gorgeous showcase of vocal layering, a plaintive semi-ballad that not only layers verse melodies above each other but where Stipe and Mills share the chorus in equal parts to a beautiful effect, topped by Mills’ showstopper bridge that hammers in the song’s wistfulness. It’s a simple but impressively effective song; apparently one of Stipe’s personal all-time favourites and for a good reason. “Cuyahoga” is another one of the same kind, another song both beautiful and beautifully sad, now driven by Mills’ bass and supported by another straightforward but stunning chorus, which by the end of the song has started to feel gigantic. It’s a great example of how the nuanced songwriting of Fables merges with the muscular form of Life’s Rich Pageant: a song that predicts the future as much as it shows the band’s then-present.

The rest of Pageant is a little more hit and miss, in a half-intentional manner given the band’s love for curveballs. The goofy, tropically tinged “Underneath the Bunker” is effectively filler, even if amusing; similarly the novelty bubblegum pop cover “Superman” is superfluous in the grand scheme of things but it’s good fun, with Mills getting his album lead vocal debut with it. It is also somewhat of a hidden track here (according to the mixed up tracklist) even if it was released as a single, and that secret surprise spot is the best place for something silly like it. “Flowers of Guatemala”, “What If We Give It Away” and “Swan Swan H” round off the tracklist in a pleasant way. “What If We Give It Away” is a fairly standard type of R.E.M. mid-tempo they could knock out in their sleep at this stage but it’s also standard good, and the low-key torch song “Flowers of Guatemala” can get really pretty whenever it kicks up its gear a notch - both have their place secured in the selection for a reason. “Swan Swan H” is a bit of a retread from last album’s “Wendell Gee” in terms of being a moody closer (excluding the semi-hidden “Superman”), and while it builds up to something close to lovely towards its end it’s less of a stand out than anything else on the album. Bill Berry once quipped that he wished he had not laid a drum track on the song and giving it some thought, it would probably work a lot better without the marching beat.

Ironically, while Pageant has some of R.E.M.‘s  wilder stylistic excursions so far, coming after two somewhat more inconsistent albums it’s clear that the band have had a much more focused vision for Pageant in comparison. This translates to a whole lot more confident performance and the highs of this album are some of 80s R.E.M.’s highs overall. and the album keeps throwing them one after another. I’d hazard to say it’s one of the most energized albums of the band’s entire career: a showcase for the sheer strength the band could employ at will, to the point that it even reflects on the calmer material. For the first time since Murmur it sounds like the band are forging ahead with a clear idea of what they are doing and where they want to be going, and it’s employed to such effect that even with its occasional near-misses it’s a discography highlight. Not to mention that out of all the R.E.M. albums, Pageant has the biggest grin on its face as it powers through its snappy songs. One of the band’s early essentials.

The 1986 I.R.S. Years Vintage re-release bonus tracks are plentiful but very hit and miss, and mostly the latter. There’s a couple of perfunctory covers with Aerosmith’s “Toys in the Attic” and Everly Brothers’ “Dream (All I Have to Do)”, which are less interesting in practice than they sound in concept (the “Toys in the Attic” cover in particular is a right bore even if R.E.M. covering Aerosmith is a curious idea). Out of the originals “Rotary Ten” is an average instrumental and “Tired of Singing Trouble” is a miniature a cappella snippet whose function is to act as a bridge between the actual album and the bonus tracks, and doesn’t even bear any particular curio value. The only cuts worth of any real interest are the two alternative recordings of the album cuts. “Just a Touch” predates the album by quite a few years and the early live take here shows some of the minor changes the song’s taken along the way. The acoustic version of “Swan Swan H” is arguably the only key track: if you agree with Berry and myself that the song might have sounded a little better had it been stripped down a little, this version here will probably be as close to definitive as you can get.

Rating: 8/10

Peter Gabriel - So (1986)

1) Red Rain; 2) Sledgehammer; 3) Don’t Give Up; 4) That Voice Again; 5) Mercy Street; 6) Big Time; 7) We Do What We’re Told (Milgram’s 37); 8) This Is the Picture (Excellent Birds); 9) In Your Eyes

Gabriel lets his pop sensibilities fly free and creates one of the defining albums of the 1980s.

Key tracks: "Red Rain", "Sledgehammer", "In Your Eyes"

The 80s didn’t treat many of the previous decade’s rock stars kindly. Or rather, the rock stars had no clue how to react to the times and repeatedly embarrassed themselves as a result. The advancing studio technology and the increasing scope and capability of synthesizers shaped the sounds of the era and many past giants, nervous of losing their cultural foothold, took the path of lowest effort and let the trends shape them without thinking twice. The result is an embarrassing grey spot in a number of rock history’s classic discographies, which people are either warned about or which fans pretend just don’t plain exist.

Peter Gabriel saw the new technology as an opportunity. His solo career had started out fairly mundane but it had evolved and gained new depths as the albums kept coming. Gabriel is an artist who sees the studio as his favourite instrument: his musical development and a lot of the depths and strengths of his music are integrally tied to advancements in technology unlocking new musical possibilities, sometimes spearheading these advancements himself. He’s an artisan producer just as much as he is a musician and the 1980s came as a blessing to him. The new possibilities served as an inspiration, a way for him to make the music come alive exactly as it appeared in his imagination. And thus, where most of his peers wilted away, Gabriel flourished: this was his playground, not a submission to trends.

So is Gabriel’s version of the ‘80s Pop Album. It’s obviously more accessible than his previous albums: he’s never shied away from a more direct sound (he did start his solo career with “Solsbury Hill”, after all) but So is markably more universally approachable, brushing off the more abstract soundscapes and brimming with choruses that feel instantly at home in stadiums for crowds to connect to. The key difference is that Gabriel has done it in a fashion that emphasises his strengths, rather than hiding them underneath trends. If anything, the central audible theme of the album isn’t the hook-favouring direction but how Gabriel exercises the new freedoms and possibilities he’s found with the new studio technology. Sonically So is just as adventurous as his past albums, but in a different direction: taking the lessons he took from his prior forays into soundtracks, mixing in the world music inspiration he was starting to dwell in and finding a way to bring the absolute best out of every layer and instrument he saw fit to include. The 2002 remaster is even clearer about this: the gorgeous remastering work (which I presume has been kept with subsequent re-releases) helps to push off some of the more dated symptoms of the era and allows the details of the rich arrangements come out more boldly. So is, quite frankly, absolutely golden to listen to in terms of pure sound. The rich sound also helps to underline the sheer amount of talent Gabriel had gathered around him to bring his vision to life, in particular in the rhythm section thanks to Tony Levin’s superbly fluid bass finding the perfect match in Manu Katché’s precise, fill-happy drumwork.

The ubiquitous “Sledgehammer” is here, obviously - it’s a song that defines the album both in music history as well as conceptually, its punchy groove and shout-out chorus having become Gabriel’s signature song as well as indicator of the album’s approach to production. It’s incredible, really - it’s stacked with one instantly memorable stand-out moment after another, building its intensity until unleashing a finale that bids farewell to the song’s killer chorus completely because it’s found something even bigger. That it’s actually nowhere near the album’s best moment is the real testament to So’s quality: after launching into it early on, following the epic opening statement “Red Rain” that could happily be a signature moment for Gabriel on its own (it’s certainly one of his most awe-inspiring moments, particularly as the choruses take their dramatic flight), So’s tracklist morphs into a borderline arrogant series of dethroning its most famous song. “Don’t Give Up” builds something grand out of the simplest elements and progression, devoting much of its space to the simple magic of Gabriel and Kate Bush’s charisma sparking against eachother in one of the album’s two key guest spots. “That Voice Again” is warm and welcoming with its keyboard-laden soar, Gabriel beckoning with an openly inviting tone that comes off almost shocking after the relative coldness of the preceding albums. “Mercy Street” features one of the album’s most wonderful moments of production, this time married to a deep atmosphere and a majestic tune. “Big Time” is effectively Sledgehammer 2 (including a similar video) and re-uses all its tricks, and while it’s not quite as strong as the original it finds a more urgent, frantic approach that gives it its own voice. And there is “In Your Eyes” - a strong contender for Gabriel’s greatest moment overall. It’s so serene it’s downright disarming and so uplifting that it soothes the soul, Gabriel pleading and praising with such a vulnerable tone that it feels like he’s tapping into some sort of universal connection.

The experimental tone of PG III and IV has largely been pushed to the sidelines, relegated to two songs near the end. Out of these, “We Do What We’re Told” is a bit of a non-event: it’s an effectively atmospheric mantra with a more soundtrack-like feel but its mood isn’t particularly engaging or haunting despite its best wishes, and what you’re left with is the album abruptly slamming down the brakes to hear Gabriel and backing vocalists repeat a few lines over and over again. Gabriel did a lot of soundtrack work across the 1980s and “We Do What We’re Told” feels like a remnant. “This Is the Picture” fares far, far better. So largely defines Gabriel in the 1980s but he kept himself busy dropping a scattering of random songs across various compilations and, yes, soundtracks throughout the decade. These songs had a more neurotic groove to them and “This Is the Picture” falls along that line as it finds Gabriel and Laurie Anderson (the album’s second major guest vocal) trade lines atop a twitching, minimalistic groove that keeps rebuilding itself. It’s still highly at odds with the rest of So, but “We Do What We’re Told” smoothes its entrance (so I guess that’s why it’s there) and the song itself is downright hypnotic: over time it’s become a strange personal favourite that I never quite acknowledge when thinking about the album but find myself entranced by when it does eventually appear.

Where most of his fellow 70s rock figureheads lost themselves in the 1980s, So is, in my opinion, where Peter Gabriel really found himself - where his solo discography really comes to life. That’s not a knock on his previous albums by any means because they are all good (okay, maybe not PG II), but they were audibly restricted by their era’s limitations, particularly as Gabriel got more adventurous. Starting from So, Gabriel finally had the means to reach the full extent of his visions. In no way is sound ever more important than the actual songcraft, but as said before Gabriel is just as much a producer as he is a writer: that rich, highly-detailed and carefully thought-out sound is an integral part of how his songwriting comes to life. And you can hear the difference: So is full of life, ideas and evocative moments of absolute musical genius. At its best moments it radiates a grand sense of wide-eyed wonder that joyously raises the hair on your back with excitement. So is comfortably not only one of Gabriel’s very best, but a landmark album of the 1980s in general.

One final note regarding the tracklist. The original running order in 1986 was compromised by the limitations of the vinyl format and there are probably a number of people to whom it’s more natural that “In Your Eyes” is in the middle of the album. Gabriel fixed this with all subsequent re-releases and it’s honestly such an improvement that the original running order is plain insulting. The two off-beat tracks do not make a convincing closer and the album finishing with “In Your Eyes” is a natural climax point, given both the song’s emotional resonance as well as how it musically builds into an epic finale. It’s one of the best examples of retroactive tracklist amendment, and no one should need to go through the original sequencing anymore.

Rating: 9/10