I have had this record for decades, and have dropped the needle on it many times. And I absolutely hated it every single time. Couldn’t even get through the first song. This was a shoe-in for the purge pile, surely.
But, for some reason, tonight this album made sense. Perhaps it was the dozens of mid-‘80s productions I spent all day sampling, or maybe it’s because I finally listened past the first song. This is a very weird band, and a hard one to pin down. The songs and arrangements are very shiny and mainstream-sounding, very much a product of its time. Sometimes it’s a bit too much, and that’s what always drove me away. But upon closer examination, the arrangements and song structures are totally bonkers. Beats are dropped randomly, unrelated interludes stitched into the middle-eights. Sometimes they get super cheesy but then they flip the switch and get waaaay out there and I dig that kind of dichotomy.
While I could never get into this album before, or this era of the band, I did get really into the John Mitchell version of It Bites, especially the last album, Map Of The Past. I just about wore my copy out and am bummed that they never made another one.
It is still unclear as to my true feelings about this album but maybe repeat listening will push the meter further toward “dig”.
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