996. Boz Scaggs, Middle Man (1980)

“Say, what do you think/ Of gentlemen wearing mink?,” Boz Scaggs croons on “Jojo,” the lead track on and first single from Middle Man. That’s suitably emblematic of the affected prestige and classiness of the album, the performer’s ninth overall. That thoroughly buffed style had served Scaggs very well on the pop charts in preceding years, especially in the case of the 1976 album Silk Degrees, which went platinum five times over and yielded three Top 40 singles.

The follow-up album, Down Two Then Left, didn’t fare as well on the charts, so Scaggs once again enlisted the backing musicians from Silk Degrees, many of whom had formed the band Toto in the interim. The result is an album that’ undeniably meticulously crafted, arguably a perfect artifact of its time. For good or for ill, it captures the point when the fussy bombast of prog rock settled like silt, leaving behind pop-rock that instead appropriated its aspiring intricacy from fusion jazz. And the likelihood that all the musicians involved would decry disco as an awful betrayal of rock music didn’t mean they weren’t eager to borrow dance music’s production sheen.

This stuff isn’t good. It’s notable only for the flashes of something — anything — even mildly interesting, such the the rich, crisp back-up vocals of ace session singer Rosemary Butler powering past the synths on “Angel You,” or the amusing see-saw guitar solo on “Breakdown Dead Ahead.” It’s even a little entertaining to think of album closer “You Got Some Imagination” as the J. Geils Band trying their best to replicate the sound of Billy Joel’s 52nd Street. The unbearably drippiness of “You Can Have Me Anytime” (“On wings of the night/Once again you’ll take flight”) is more indicative.

 

995. Magazine, Magic, Murder, and the Weather (1981)

When it came to record their fourth album, the ground under the band Magazine was a little wobbly. Splendidly inventive guitarist John McGeoch — who was a co-founder of the band with former Buzzcocks frontman Howard Devoto — had departed to join up with Siouxsie and the Banshees. Devoto was having a tricky time filling McGeoch’s slot in the lineup, enlisting Robert Simon, formerly of Ultravox, for live shows before settling on Ben Mandelson by the time the band went into the studio.

For most Magazine fans, the resulting album, Magic, Murder, and the Weather, is the band’s weakest effort. It definitely strays from the previously established jaggedness had mellowed. Album opener “About the Weather” finds the band giving it their best Roxy Music groove swoon (an association accentuated by Devoto’s crooning vocals), but the anxious post-punk beat gives them away. Despite the album’s lackluster reputation, there are interesting tracks to be found on it. “The Honeymoon Killers” features cascading music that sounds like it was designed to accompanying a dizzying waltz sequence in a a colorful, Gothic horror film, and “Come Alive” has a pleasing, Devo-style weirdness.

The album definitely wanders a bit on the second side, picking up an aimlessness that makes it seem as if Devoto and company have already determined the end of the band is near and they’re just playing out the string. “The Great Man’s Secrets” is so repetitive that it becomes numbing, and  “This Poison” strives for icy cool, but has a noodling around quality as Devoto sleepily intones the lyrics.

Several weeks before the album’s release, Devoto decided he could go no further with Magazine. He formally left the band, and the remaining members dissolved Magazine shortly thereafter.

 

994. Hunters & Collectors, The Jaws of Life (1984)

According to at least one fan with a long memory, the music press initially struggled to describe the sound of early records from the Australian band Hunters & Collecters. One but of phrasing they settled on was “dirty art funk.” That seems about right.

The Jaws of Life, the band’s third album, finds Hunters & Collectors taking that sort of confrontational sound and expanding on it in fascinating ways. The group had nearly broken up prior to this release, but reconvened (with a slightly modified lineup) in part because they felt there was a contribution to be made to the Australian music scene. The thunderous and driving “Holding Down a D” makes for a satisfying statement of purpose, an argument that Hunters & Collectors should be part of the musical dialogue.

That track is indicative of the crafty, expectation-upending rock across the album. “I Couldn’t Give It You” is a howl of agitation delivered from the corner of a battered bar room, as drums pulse angrily and horns sting like hornets. Their cover of the Ray Charles song “I Believe to My Soul” (the title shortened to “I Believe”) finds the band effectively injecting juke joint blues with a distinctive Australian gruffness. “Betty’s Worry or The Slab” sounds a little like Nick Cave hopped up on pep pills, and “Carry Me” is coated in a misty rain of psychedelia.

Released in the U.S. on Slash Records, The Jaws of Life was the band’s proper introduction to most listeners on these shores. It’s a dandy start.

 

993. New Model Army, The Ghost of Cain (1986)

Around the time New Model Army released The Ghost of Cain, their third album, the U.S. government officially declared the band’s music had “no artistic merit.” That unusually harsh assessment was provided as justification for denying the band members the necessary visas to tour in the States.

“If this government is actually frightened of what New Model Army might do to American society, then I’d be really pleased,” lead singer Justin Sullivan (who occasionally used the embarrassing stage name Slade the Leveller) told Spin. “I’d love to threaten you that much. I really would.”

Produced by the legendary Glyn Johns, The Ghost of Cain channels politicized punk energy into ten tracks of tuneful, fairly straightforward rock music. The lyrics race right up the point of becoming didactic without ever quite dropping into the pit. Driven largely by a galloping acoustic guitar line, “51 State” is a thrilling, sing-along indictment of their U.K. homeland’s fealty to the geopolitical preferences of the U.S. (Although it feels like a quintessential New Model Army track, it was also a rare instance of the band employing the songwriting talents of an outsider, since Ashley Cartwright, of the band the Shakes, is credited with the lyrics.)  And while “Western Dream” sounds a little like a Big Country song smartly played a few revolutions per minute faster, the chorus delivers more of a punch than the comparison band ever mustered: “All lies, all lies/ All schemes, all schemes/ Every winner means a loser/ In the Western dream.”

It’s not all manifestos set to melodies, however. New Model Army evidences a surprising tenderness on “Lovesongs,” and the aptly named “Ballad” brings both larger and more intimate concerns to its fretting about generational complacency. Still, there’s no denying that radical rabble-rousing is the primary flavor here. The album is like a sly invitation to join the revolution, exemplified by the way “All of This” creeps along restively like a secret delivered in a rush (“The agents issue the statements/ To the waiting press who circulate the words/ Justification propaganda/ Western foreign policy around the world”).

When it came time to tour in support of The Ghost of Cain, New Model Army was able to work through their issues with U.S. Immigration Services. Just how much harm they exacted on American society as a result is unclear.

 

To learn more about this gigantic endeavor, head over to the introduction. Other entries can be found at the CMJ Top 1000 tag. Most of the images in these posts come straight from the invaluable Discogs.