LCTWWM, Worst Prefab Album To Date: Discuss

I dearly love Prefab Sprout.

I love the scruffy Durham lads (Walk On, LIMOGES, Basketball). I love the McQueen Age (Bonny, Lucille, Appetite). I love Nancy and Cars & Girls and The Golden Calf. I was there for The Comeback, and I heralded the Wild Horses and the Moondog and reveled in the Broken and Mercy. I literally gasped out loud the day I walked into HMV (USA) and saw 'Protest Songs' on the shelf (skip Cows, Gates and Horsechimes and the album is perfect)!

The long wait made the disappointing Andromeda a little harder to swallow. What it didn't do was take away from the brilliance of Electric Guitars or Fifth Horseman (and Dragons & Just Because I Can from the singles).

2001. Gunman. I laughed. I cried. It was better than Cats (but honestly, only Cowboy Dreams and Cornfield are classics).

The 22:06 of the title track alone makes Megahertz worth the exorbitant import price I paid for it.

2006 acoustic versions of Steve McQueen were a welcome addition to the remastered release (Appetite and River almost eclipse the originals).

So.

Over 20 years of being a lovestruck, obsessive (yet objective) fan have me purposefully NOT listening to advance samples & clips of LCTWWM... no, no listening - fully patient - until the import CD arrives at the doorstep.

Last Thursday (10.15), the little international parcel was waiting in the post box. I was on my way out of town (my favorite way to listen to new music - undivided attention on the road) so I cut open the box and threw the disc in the car.

And.

It is now Tuesday (10.20).

I've listened to the CD all the way through thrice.

That's all I can take, honestly.







Colossally disappointed doesn't even begin to explain my feelings.

But let's go back to Thursday evening:


...I took off over a dark back road, driving through the cool New England night as the cymbal roll of track one began...


'Let There Be Music'

Paddy's pitch-shifted vocals, the electronic backing band - I felt like it was 1993 and I was listening to Jordan's follow-up album. By the time the spoken-word bridge arrived (a 100% homage to "I Live In A Suitcase" Thomas Dolby) I was thrilled. This upbeat, 90's yang to 'The Ice Maiden's' yin had me ecstatic, anxious for more.


'Ride'

Track two. Doubled electronic bass. Then, the chord progression turns familiar... like 'Prisoner Of The Past' meets 'Scarlet Nights'. I'm loving it. The chorus is a bit of a letdown, only in that the song seems to be constantly building, building up to something that never arrives. It's far from bad - but the chorus seems too easy, tame.

Unfinished.


'I Love Music'

Track three. Goofy two-step cheap preset keyboard rhythm accompaniment starts us off. Paddy gives us what sounds to me like a song that would fit in some over-the-top literal musical play about music itself. Forced. Obvious.

Note: on second listen, it's grown on me. Just a bit.

(It's also important to note here that quite often, Paddy's cheesy and fey arrangements [instrumentation, lyrics too] can be embarassing, 'bad', 'gay' and yet brilliant - all at the same time. Not always, mind you. But sometimes. Yes.)


'God Watch Over You'

Track four. This one starts like a Sting b-side (not that that's nec. a bad thing). Then, we're treated to the second 'flat', uninspiring chorus. All of a sudden, I'm a little worried. These are starting to sound too much like demos - unfinished, slapped together ideas, waiting for the final polish that often happens when assembling 'the band' and producer/s for the final recording session. The inspirations and suggestions of Thomas Dolby (or any producer for that matter) that would normally color such an endeavor are now becoming palpably absent.


'Music Is A Princess'

Good fucking lord. Music is a... a what? I almost drove off the road before I even got through 30 seconds of this. There is a reason some songs remain demos.

Forever.

Don't get me wrong - there's a 'Sproutiness' to the chords, the music - and with a real band and a producer (and a dramatic lyric overhaul) this song could be worthy of committing to wax. But yeah. Wow. This record is now starting to read like PrefabTube or BlogSprout.

MacAloon. Sans editor. Epic lulz.


'Earth: The Story So Far'

The 70's Tomita intro had me reaching for the 'eject' button, my brain was screaming "You've been had, mate! Ahahahaa!!" But then: hold on, what's this - it's turning into the 'Moonlighting' theme! You know, from that 80's Bruce Willis TV show. Maybe it's just a joke!? But wait: no, no... now it's the 'Love Boat' theme!!

"Welcome to earth... exciting and new! Come aboard the story so far, we're expecting you!"

At this point, I'm wishing it was a theme song cover. At least I could enjoy the ultra-dated sounding instrumentation and dated production that way - as nostalgia and respect for the original material. Period. To be fair, dated synths and dated production themselves don't bother me per se. But couple that with Paddy's unfinished copy & paste arrangements and performances... well, we're not talking about a 'Prefab Sprout' album anymore.


'Last Of The Great Romanties' < (as it's spelled on the cover art - tch tch)

I'd probably have fallen asleep by this point if I wasn't so mad/dissapointed/soul destroyed. There isn't even a skeleton of a good melody or arrangement here... this song is the sound of someone testing out their string presets on a Roland synth.


'Falling In Love'

OK, Has it ever been this bad? 'Troubled Man'... maybe. Even 'Anne Marie' and 'Life's A Miracle' sound awesome next to this, this... nothingness. The chords are run of the mill, cliché-ridden. Paddy's been able to fashion some brilliant stuff around such basics before.

Not this time.


'Sweet Gospel Music'

Almost - at this stage - who cares? I'm so dashed by the previous six songs, even if Paddy threw me 'Goodbye Lucille 2009' I'm not sure I'd notice. Another - yet another song that evolves into nothing.


'Meet The New Mozart'

Hint: he's living in New York. A 'Doo-Wop In Harlem' intro leads us straight into the 'Cher-Antares Auto-tune effect' vocal that was dated about six minutes after it was released in '98. Another nothing about nothing song sketch demo sketch about nothing thing.


'Angel Of Love'

It's been eleven songs now? Unbelievable. Is it over? I'm sure Paddy wanted this chorus to sound elegiac - dare I say transcendent. But goddamn, brother. You can't get there with a DX7 and an Alesis HR16 drum machine (not the path you've taken, anyway.)



OVERALL

The entire album felt like it was my nightmare Prefab Sprout record come to life - the plan for which would've read something like this:

1. Take the lyrics, instrumentation and arrangements from 'Andromeda Heights' and 'Jordan' that are most cloying and syrupy and combine them with lots of average playing. Use clichéd chords and transitions as much as possible.


2. Do make sure songs follow a verse/chorus/verse/bridge/chorus structure almost exclusively. Remember to avoid any unusual instrumentation, time signatures or creative 'quirks' that would color these songs anything but the most basic.

3. AND DON'T FORGET! As much as possible, repeat the EXACT same vocal melodies and inflections, bass and guitar lines, synthesizer and drum sequences across every chorus and verse. CUT & PASTE IS YOUR FRIEND!


And.

Yes.

I fully understand where LCTWWM came from, and that, yes yes - even as released - it is ultimately just a 'demo'.

But you know what?

Were it a download on a website that Paddy offered to fans, i.e. "hey folks, here's a rather fully produced demo of a concept album I put together in the 90's - go ahead and download it for £5.00", perhaps my review might be a little less harsh.

But in the record bin marked 'Prefab Sprout', in the shops and in my library - well, that's always been a pretty sacred place. A place I could rely on, no matter what my mood. A place that would sing me to action or to sleep. Bring me from tears to laughter. True, it's not a place free from scars (Pearly Gates, Love Will Find Someone For You, Farmyard Cat). But it's a place I've come to respect nonetheless.

With just eight proper albums over 25 years, I guess I shouldn't complain. But those first four yielded 42 songs (with 27 of them perfect brilliance - 31 if we count b-sides.)

In contrast, the 52 songs released over last four albums have yielded just 12 that have made a difference to me at all (or 14, with all applicable b-sides considered).

Wow.


Anyway, I will recover. I will get over it.

But for this week?

Gutted.

That made me want to cry.
I've felt a similar way, 1988 with FLPTM and I've posted this before so I won't rehash, then again when I heard AH for the first time just a little over a year ago. Empty, betrayed, unconsolable, and yeah I know I was just listening to a record for Christ sakes, but still.

So I hear you, and maybe because I know these are unearthed and reheated demos, I've given it an unfair pass. But I truly love these songs that Paddy finally got out to us. Could it be better with a full band- hell yes!

Anyway, I've got to shut down the rehab clinic and head home, so let me end with this.
I have a glimmer of hope that if you keep listening you will see the facets of the diamonds in the rough that at least 6 (maybe 7) of the LCTWWM cuts are underneath the cheesy 90's cloak.

And if not, PM me I'd be glad to pay full price plus shipping for the disc, you see I've got a lot of interest going in the local evangelical community and the fundamentalist folks are hot to get their hands on this "Christian music" disc. If that ain't irony, I don't know what is, but what the hell. Sales are sales and if this album slowly builds in the Christian music scene and bumps sales up a few hundred copies over the years so much the better.

Most of all, my biggest hope is that from the ashes of this long abandoned project comes "new" music from Paddy.

Like you said Paddy an album a year, now let's have it brother!

Wow how tough was that!
The only thing I'll concur with you it's that I also hear The Love Boat in Earth the Story... So you stole my thunder here. But hell, to me the melody is gorgeous!

I love the album and I can't put it down.

I can completely relate to your disappointment, Rollmo, even though we differ greatly in terms of the weakest points on Protest Songs ('Til The Cows Come Home'? One of his gems!) and the strongest moments of Andromeda Heights (your review pretty much sums up how I feel about 'The Fifth Horesman', bar the intro)

LCTWWM seems such an easy record to lay into that it makes me wonder if part of the problem lays partly outside of the music. And I think, as alluded to above, it's the fact that what we have is a curiosity presented as an album proper*. And though, as Gmbcole says, this may be the catalyst for some more albums, even highly produced fully commited projects, we can't mistake the evident direction that Paddy is commited to in terms of song style. You either like that general direction or you don't. Not meaning to sound doomy but I bet that anything Paddy releases from now on will be in the 'Andromeda Heights', 'Electric Guitars EP' (which I thought was terrible) 'Gunman' (which even with Visconti's production nouse remains a sub par offering), 'LCTWWM' mould.

Still, to be fair, with the title track, that one really good hook in 'Last Of The Great Romantics' (which is ruined by that coy resolution and the rest of the arrangement), and the initial musical promise of 'Ride', it at least glimpses some of the Prefab magic.

Incidently I bought 'Cupid And Psyche' the same day I bought LCTWWM, and LCTWWM still sounded more dated in comparison

(I played it to a friend who said it was like drinking a cup of tea with ten sugars in it...ouch!)

* I'm fascinated by the question of how expectation and situation plays into someones experience of a work, especially an art form as immediate as music, not to mention how the cultural conventions that manage expectation play into how art forms are created.

Now, come on, comparing Cupid & Psyche (probably the MOST - wonderfully - produced album in history) to a home made one man demo is not fair, is it?
A bit like comparing the Sex Pistols to Dream Theater, makes no sense.
Let's Change The World is excellent for what it is, and Music Is A Princess and Sweet Gospel Music are up there with Paddy's best. I feel it as a worthy follow up to Jordan, which is my favourite album after Swoon. I prefer it to Andromeda and Gunman.
Maybe you're not completely ready to welcome different stuff from your hero?
I see the same problem on the New Order forum. The Bad Lieutenant album is brilliant, but I just see people which are not ready for it, they dismiss it as bland guitar pop while some of the tunes are just as good as the best New Order guitar pop (Running Out Of Luck, Walk On Silver Water) and most of the songs are at least as good as the last Electronic album a decade ago, which they liked!
I say, if you don't like songs as good as these, maybe you wouldn't have liked the songs which have become your favourites back then if you heard them now.
Maybe if Let's Change The World had been released back then and Jordan was released just now as a demo you'd like the first and hate the latter?
What I really want to say is you must insist, you'll definitely find a lot of stuff you like about Prefab Sprout in this album, that's if you still like Prefab Sprout, of course.
After all I didn't get Swoon the first months I heard it, it did take time, but it's been my favourite for almost 20 years now. Keep hearing Let's Change The World with open ears, open mind and open heart.

Thanks for writing in, Rollmo. Sorry to read you're so disappointed.

Taste is personal, and one should never argue with it. For your sake, let's hope the next album (when? when?) will be better. For me, this album is in fact so much better than I had dared to hope, it still gets me on my knees when I hear it.

I just wanted to address something about the demos and arrangements that seems to have been lost here on the forum. Doesn't anyone here appreciate the incredible talent and craft of Paddy's in making these demos? He's playing ALL the instruments himself - arguably mostly keyboards and computers, and one or two guitars. But nevertheless. Compare LCTWWM to the "Bearpark" demo, and one realizes he had gone a long way in five years. He's arranged and "conducted" all these instruments into a worthy musical atmospheric album. Yes, it's cheesy at times, yes, it sounds dated, yes, many songs do sound alike... and yet, if one listens past all the technology, one finds truly beautiful songs with wonderful melodies and evocative lyrics. I don't think the original demos to Steve McQueen were this elaborate, or Jordan for that matter.

Having said all that, my personal hope for the future of the Sprouts is that Paddy finally will unleash some NEW material, preferrably "Zero Attention Span" before it's drained of all its topicality. Then we will find out the status of his songwriting (hear, hear, Jeremy!) and hopefully the digital soundscape will better fit the songs. Unless... unless Neil flies in from France, Martin dusts off his bass, Wendy clears her golden throat and Thomas leaves his computers for a "reunion in the air" in a studio near Newcastle. Wishful thinking, I know... but since when was that a crime?

I was going to write something a little different, my point being that the problem with the sounds on LCTWWM isn’t the fact that they’re sounds from the 90’s, it’s simply the fact that they’re not particularly musical sounds regardless of the era they derive from.

And maybe you’re ready to accept anything from yours. Sorry, I don’t really have ‘heroes’, and I guess my point is that what is disappointing with LCTWWM for me is that it doesn’t offer anything essentially different from ‘Andromeda Heights’ or ‘The Gunman’. Yes, I agree that stylistically it makes sense as a follow up to Jordan, but is better viewed as the album that marks the songwriting transition from Jordan to Andromeda Heights. Now, some people happen to love Andromeda Heights, but if, like me, you don’t then LCTTWM is yet more evidence of it all going somewhere else, somewhere I’m not all that into.

For what it’s worth I got into Prefab Sprout in the mid-nineties. I think Steve McQueen was one of the last albums I bought of theirs in fact. More strange is the fact that the song Andromeda Heights was the first thing I heard of theirs, and what subsequently got me interested in the group. I really don’t think that timing has much influence in terms of forming my opinion.

I can’t see myself ever falling in love with LCTWWM regardless of when it was released. Song wise, Jordan is substantially stronger. Wild Horses, the Jesse James songs, We Let The Stars Go Free. Great stuff. For me nothing on LCTWWM compares in terms of seizing upon a strong idea and seeing it through.

But it is interesting how Paddys career trajectory seems to split his audience into those who think that the post Jordan work (and even some aspects of 'Jordan') moves into very perverse territory indeed, and those that see it as a logical and welcome continuation of the earlier work. The question is do these two factions relate to the earlier work differently, or is something else going on?

Interesting review. I agree with many of your comments, but not the main thrust. Two points of order: Pearly Gates is a masterpiece. It's Pearly Gates. And it's 'McAloon', nor 'MacAloon' if you're complaining about spelling.

I was very disappointed with Andromeda and Gunman, and felt that they were both saccharine, claustrophobically produced, sterile, cringeworthy in parts and that McAloon's songwriting had become stale and obvious. Where, indeed, were the surprising insights and chord changes and details to colour and texture the melodies?

I don't feel that way about LCTWWM, even though it shares many of the same qualities. I think this is down to three factors:

1. The melodies. The melodies of the songs on this album are, for me, almost without exception wonderful. I boggle a bit about counting out how many Prefab Sprout songs I love and how many I don't, but I'd grant that Meet The New Mozart and Falling In Love are probably my least favourite songs on it now. But the melodies of all the other songs have been running around my head repeatedly for the last few weeks, and that hasn't happened since Jordan.

2. The subject matter. I think it has helped, for me, that the songs are not all about, um, falling in love. I found that a lot of the songs on Andromeda and Gunman were 'exercise' songs. Here's a phrase or a concept, let's write a nice pop song around it. Weightless, Fifth Horseman, Gunman, Cowboy Dreams all have quite readily identifiable subjects, and it's like a still life. Let's see what I can do to fit some cleverness and personality around the cliches. The subjects of many of the songs on LCTWWM are also cliches, or stereotypes, or have been done many times before, but it's not luuuuurve, in most cases. Somehow it just seems to me much less soppy to be pouring your heart out to your love of music, rather than another doe-eyed imaginary Hayley Mills. There's a passion and personal conviction to the songs that lifts them out of the ordinary for me. When he sings he feels like Yuri Gagarin, I don't believe him. When he sings that he's just a boy in rags, and audibly smiles at the end of the song, I do.

3. Related to that, is the story of the album itself. I take the point about it not being an album proper but being marketed that way - we haven't discussed the fact that it is branded as a Prefab Sprout album without any of the band playing on it but him, not even Martin, which I think is the first time that has happened? Anyway, yes, the way the album is presented makes a difference to the way it is perceived, of course, and I'd go further than you have. Being totally honest about it, of course the myth and mystique of this album have made a difference to how I listen to it, as have the interviews with Paddy about it, the reviews, and the general sense of the comeback being underway. The passing of time has also made a difference: released in 1993, even with polish in the studio, I may have found it a disappointment after Jordan and bemoaned its cheesiness and general samey feel. But coming after Andromeda and Gunman, so long after, so many years after it was shelved against his will... no, I don't have the same reaction at all. I see it as a tremendous success, a form of quiet vengeance on those who doubted him, the start of a widespread recognition that he is a genius, and a life-affirming, heart-lifting, utterly innocent tribute to music and spirituality. That may be unfair, but that is how it strikes me now - it has come at a time when I'm ready to hear it.

That said, I do think there's more to it than that. Shorn of context, I think this is a much stronger set of songs than Andromeda or Gunman. Right now it rivals Jordan, Langley Park and Protest Songs in my affections. (Swoon and Steve McQueen still stand on another hill, looking down on the world of music made by man and smiling at their attempts to catch up.)

Finally, disappointed or not, I take it we all hope the success leads to more releases? Any music from Paddy McAloon is surely better than none.

ouch...ouch...ouch!
That hurts...whilst taste is individual & subjective, I think the thing with LCTWWM is to give it time. Repeated listening will allow the songs to mature & evolve in your head. I truly believe these are some of the most intelligent & beautifully crafted songs Paddy has ever created.
Mind you, am I alone on this site (it often seems so) in believing that Andromeda Heights contains some of Paddy's most sublimely wonderful creations ever, such as "Life's a miracle", "The mystery of love" and "Swans" as well as the excellent "Prisoner of the Past". Much of the material on this album has greater empathy with Gershwin than any modern contemporaries.
Oddly enough, I bought Steve McQueen & Cupid & Psyche on EXACTLY the same date in June 1985, taped both vinyl LPs on a C90 tape & ended up falling in love with both on a holiday to Southern Italy that summer.
Both remain firm favourites & on my iPod.

Your post came as a breath of fresh air for me, Rollmo. I do love LCTWWM, but then I fall into the category of people who think Andromeda Heights is a daring masterpiece. But I love the album in the way one might love an impossibly annoying relative.

A while ago, I tried to write elsewhere that I think there's something off about LCTWWM. To me, the problem is not in the details, not in the production, not in the sweetness, not the 15-year-time-lapse ... I still can't put my finger on it, but your post is an inspiration to persue the matter, Rollmo (as are JJ's elaborations on the same theme).

LCTWWM is a wonderful album, but there's something terribly wrong with it. I'll come back with what it is when I find out.

pearls before swine..

Yeah, Rock does have a good point - some of us are simply not as musically advanced as others to even begin appreciating it.

Because Paddy thinks in albums rather than just songs it does mean you're going have fave Prefab albums and then lesser ones, but I can honestly say that after living with LCTTWM for a month I think it's one of the best. It has the focus, oomph, consistency of sound and get up and go which I think Andromeda Heights doesn't have, and it's less flabby than Jordan. But I can understand why some people might not like it..

The album is wonderful.

Anybody who doesn't think so is mental.

I remember you mentioning something about ETSSF, and how you found the sentiment of the whole thing a little queasy. Is it that Paddy is reaching for big themes but still approaching them with the coy sentimentality that he normally reserves for his love songs? That's something that struck me about the album in general, feeling that he's mistaken chronic self absorbtion for transcendance. I must say, lyrically I can't buy into much on LCTWWM. The song, 'Andromeda Heights', lyrically at least, seemed conscious of the fraility of its own vision, which leant it poignancy. It might explain why, after a few listens, 'I Love Music' seems so refreshing - it's just Paddy letting go, it connects with real and difficultly dark characters like Miles Davis and Pierre Boulez (who my music teacher once worked for, and when I asked, told me he was an utter bastard!), and there's some wit and grit there.