A to Z
THE ASSOCIATES
Perhaps (reissue, 1985) CHERRY RED
7/10
Luxurious reissue for Billy Mackenzie’s underrated baroque-pop career-killer
Powered by one the most extraordinary voices ever to electrify the pop charts, Scottish post-punk maximalists The Associates began to unravel following their 1982 breakthrough album, Sulk. With the departure of band co-founder and musical lynchpin Alan Rankine, mercurial singer Billy Mackenzie spent three years on this lavish sequel, burning through multiple producers and an eye-watering budget. The finished album received a lukewarm critical and commercial welcome in 1985, though this expanded and remastered double-disc reissue throws a kinder light on its grandiose sonic and stylistic ambitions. Perhaps is still a bloated curiosity in places, but with hindsight, also a deliciously excessive milestone in overproduced, densely layered, cocaine-bright baroque pop. Indeed, super-glossy synth-funk oddities like “Schampout”, “Waiting For The Love Boat” and “Perhaps” itself invoke some of that lustrous mid-1980s Hi-NRG opulence that defined Trevor Horn’s imperial phase. Sometimes cluttered arrangements overpower thin songs, but the elegant neo-chansons “Those First Impressions” and “Breakfast” still rank alongside Mackenzie’s best work, especially in their silken, aching, melancholy vocals.
Extras: 6/10. The bonus tracks are largely inessential instrumental versions and single mixes, but the glittery psychedelic “Kites” and the mischievous “The Girl That Took Me”, B-side to the anodyne non-album single “Take Me To The Girl”, are both worth revisiting.
THE DURUTTI COLUMN
Fidelity (reissue,1996) LES DISQUES DU CRÉPUSCULE
7/10
Blissed-out mid-’90s Balearica, on vinyl for the first time
Like a stopped clock, there have been moments when Vini Reilly’s hermetic visions have serendipitously chimed with the times, the slo-mo beats of 1990’s briefly aligning him with the chillout boom. However, come 1996, the perennially unhurried Reilly was still wallowing in this drowsy dance realm when the world had moved on, ensuring considerable charms would be almost entirely overlooked, even by fans. The album is full of shuffling breakbeats and floaty atmospherics, in which context Reilly’s trademark flamenco flourishes can occasionally make it all sound a bit– doubling as a neat summary of his stubbornly enchanting worldview.
