Log #55 - A Whitest Boy Alive Retrospective and More Love For (Very) Early Tangerine Dream

1. Tangerine Dream - The Essential
2. Tangerine Dream - Force Majeure
3. Tangerine Dream - Cyclone
4. Tangerine Dream - Phaedra
5. The Whitest Boy Alive - Rules
6. The Whitest Boy Alive - Dreams

Following my year end review a couple of posts ago I was drawn like a magnet to my Whitest Boy Alive albums. A retrospective is perhaps an overstatement considering their back catalogue consists of only two albums. It takes a few plays of each to distinguish between the two. They both follow the same format - concise catchy pop songs with whispered vocals, simple guitar riffs, electric piano, infectious bass lines and sharp snare drum beats. Surprisingly for someone who has explored and enjoyed the complexities of prog rock and classical I love both these albums despite their apparent simplicity and lack of "weight". But maybe that is why?

Actually it's simpler than that. You can have rubbish prog rock and brilliant pop. It just depends how it is done. With these albums you have a collection of beautifully crafted pop songs - practically any one of them could have been a single hit - there isn't really an "album track" or "filler" throughout both CDs.

You can have rubbish prog rock and brilliant pop. It just depends how it is done.

Dreams just pipped Rules as my album of the year for 2016/17. Not much in it apart from I heard Rules much earlier and was over familiar with some of the key tracks on there - Intentions and 1517. As for Dreams I have particularly homed in on Golden Cage and Done With You. Such brilliant bass that makes it practically impossible not to dance to or at least tap your foot.

Finally a word for the brilliant line drawings that grace their album covers, merch, and videos.

Still enjoying a late blossoming love affair with Tangerine Dream. In particular I've been playing the really early stuff (not listed here apart from Phaedra as I don't actually have them yet - so it's been a case of youtube at the office - annoyingly for the sake of a few quid I just missed out on a box set of the first 3, or even 4, albums on ebay - very silly as would cost three or four times as much new - the one I really want to get is Zeit - great cover too - another brilliant painting by Edgar Froese).

This is freak-out spacehead rock lifted to a new level...‘Zeit’ is a must listen, and unlike anything else ever made...You will not believe the places you will be taken. 

"Rockmoose" writing at Julian Cope's website http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/review/690/