China Crisis - Indie-pop before indie-pop existed

Too "British" for American audiences, too American for English synth-pop, China Crisis never received the acclaim they deserved at the time. Yet their songbook shines with definitive, ante litteram gems of the subgenre we now call "indie-pop". So here's our chance to rediscover them and tell a curious story, one that began in a suburb of Liverpool...

by Marco Bercella

"Music for anyone, but for no one in particular". A rather blunt remark, the one that Johnny Marr devotes to China Crisis, but one that contains an unwitting yet inescapable double truth. After all, what is the ultimate goal of pop music if not to reach the head and heart of as many people as possible? And yet, is there a worse joke to play on a pop band than failing to leave a mark on the collective imagination, failing to build a relationship of mutual identification with the public? Not synth-pop enough to sail unnoticed alongside the crew of the movement new romantic, not politically committed enough to ride the long wave generated by white soul acts like the Scritti Politti; on the other hand, too pop to strike a chord in the shadowed hearts of new wavers, too introspective and, as we'll see especially in the second part of their artistic story, too American to fully win over British lovers ofeasy listening. As you can see, the China Crisis story has more than one peculiarity worth telling, and, as we'll explain, also a few contingent reasons why the name, today, means little or nothing to most people.

Their hometown, Liverpool (they actually come from the suburb of Kirkby, chronicled by Teardrop Explodes in "Kirkby Workers Dream Fades"), was in 1979 home to the psychedelic pop of the Echo & The Bunnymen, the lysergic and tormented existentialism of Julian Cope and the German electronic music turned into song form by the Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark. This is the context in which Gary Daly (keyboards) and Eddie Lundon (guitars) meet, immediately setting themselves apart from the other Merseyside bands thanks to a mood dreamy and emotionally nostalgic sound, paired with unusual funky-pop longings. The city of Beatles, in those years, was certainly not thehumus ideal place to develop such impulses, so it should come as no surprise that they only land their first contract some time later, at the end of 1981, thanks to the independent label Inevitable, which releases the single "African And White".

Despite the troubled and painful start, Gary and Eddie, who in the meantime recruit bassist Gary "Gazza" Johnson and drummer Kevin Wilkinson (later in Waterboys and died by suicide in 1999 at the age of 41), are signed by Virgin, who sense commercial potential in the band's clean melodic lines. But their start is anything but dazzling. The first single, "Scream Down At Me", in truth so anonymous and mediocre that it's left off the debut album, fails to chart, forcing the management to hastily remix "African And White", already known within the alternative circuit, which manages to scrape just a lowly forty-fifth place in the single chart. The spark seems to stay just that, as not even the third single "No More Blue Horizon", a refined mid-tempo number flirting with white American soul, manages to reveal them to the wider public.

The die is now cast, and at the end of 1982 their long-awaited debut full-length finally hits the market, Difficult Shapes & Passive Rhythms, Some People Think It's Fun To Entertain, preceded by the single “Christian”, a hazy, atmospheric slow number that (finally) breaks into the top twelve on the charts. The album itself isn't poorly received either (number 21), and has the merit of sketching out the band's first real identity, caught between crossovers black and more traditional forms of synth-pop. Illuminating, from this point of view, is the sprightly opening track “Seven Sports For All”, which spins a peculiar funky hypnotism over a soft carpet of keyboards by way of contrast, the aching “Red Sails” with its warm bass-guitar pulses, and “Feel To Be Driver Away”, so polished it could pass for a sibling of the Roxy Music “Manifesto” era. Add to these the three singles already mentioned and a string of successful, mock-cheerful little marches (“You Never See It”), alongside more rarefied moments (“Jean Walks In Fresh Fields”).

A more than encouraging debut, especially considering the false start that preceded it. It's the album most closely tied synth-oriented to the Crisis, and heard with hindsight it reveals unexpected common ground with the trend brought into vogue in the Nineties by the Chicago pop bands. They're clearly working to shake off the reductive aura of balladeers of pop-ballad that people, up to that point, seemed to have pigeonholed them into.

In 1983 Gary and his friends open the British tour for the Simple Minds of the rock turn taken on “Sparkle In The Rain”, oboe, other horns and violins are brought in, and two singles are put into the works uptempo, “Tragedy And Mistery” and “Working With Fire And Steel”, with the intention of moving away from the clichés image of a group good for slow-dance shuffling, capable in its lyrics of nothing more than tender little romances. Although the songs possess all the sacred hallmarks of catchiness, it feels like a script we've already seen: the British public shrugs it off and moves on, filing both tracks away outside the top forty.

What we might call the curse of the slow number strikes again when the quartet, at the start of '84 and hot on the heels of the second album Working With Fire And Steel – Possibile Pop Songs Volume Two (1983), they release "Wishful Thinking". The track is a sublime romantic watercolor that plays out between Lundon's voice (which on this occasion steals the scene from Daly in the role of lead vocalist) and an innocent oboe melody that gives the exact measure of the excellent compositional qualities of the band's two main songwriters,ensemble. The song's number 9 chart position and its spring-twilight mood, well supported by a video that captures the melancholy landscapes of the English countryside, paradoxically go in the opposite direction to the socially engaged stance the band wanted to project.

But looking closely, Working With Fire And Steel – Possible Pop Songs Volume Two, which essentially confirms the sales performance of its predecessor by reaching number twenty back home, represents nothing less than a decisive step forward on the road to completeness (we've already mentioned the addition of the horn section, but that's just one example) and maturity, given that the neo-romantic lyrics take precedence over the supposed "labour" leanings that the album's title and cover art seem to suggest.

More polished arrangements aside, what we have here is a songwriting of excellent quality, indeed capable of producing genuine flashes of brilliance, as in the moving "The Soul Awakening", which together with "Wishful Thinking" can easily be counted among the definitive gems and ante litteram of the subgenre we now call indie-pop. Besides, tracks like "Working With Fire And Steel" and "Animals in Jungles" are nothing less than the missing link (a British one, with everything that implies) connecting Steely Dan to The Sea And Cake, the Seventies to the Nineties. Steely Dan? Yes, Steely Dan — who would have thought? Not even Eddie Lundon could have imagined such a thing when, asked during the 1984 American tour who he'd like as a producer, he jokingly replied: "Well, someone from Steely Dan!"

But Americans, as everyone knows, are very good at pulling off grand gestures when they want to. Having taken note of the wish, the Warner people promoting Crisis in the States picked up the phone and contacted Walter Becker, who, after hearing the material, enthusiastically agreed to produce the third album ("China Crisis's lyrics," he would later say, "have such an oblique sense that they strike me as absolutely brilliant: that, above all, is what connects them to Steely Dan").

Recording took place in 1984 on English soil, at Parkgate Studio in Battle, East Sussex: what until then had been more of an intention, rooted in a natural knack for writing good songs, magically became reality with Walter Becker at the console.

In Flaunt The Imperfection the songwriting is even more inspired and the production comes close to formal perfection, making the album not only China Crisis's masterpiece, but a true hidden gem of 80s English pop. The opening track, "The Highest High", picks up where the XTC left off with "General And Majors", the white reggae of "Strength of Character" winks at Scritti Politti before setting sail with its sax for the open seas toward the Americas; "Wall Of God" is a hint of what XTC themselves would soon showcase after their own turn Rundgren-esque from "Skylarking“, “Gift Of Freedom” is the old sound track by Crisis reworked with Becker's expertise, and follows the same fortunate path as the dreamy, whistle-along second single, “King In A Catholic Style”. “Bigger The Punch I’m Feeling” and “Blue Sea” are, respectively, “Seven Sports For All” and “The Soul Awakening” dressed up for the evening, and of course there's no shortage of the crowd-pleasing single that travels the world, that “Black Man Ray” which gets radio and video airplay even on our own peninsula.

China Crisis's car is now well-equipped to zip along the busy streets of pop, but perhaps it's travelling a bit too fast, since in early '85, right in the middle of promoting the album, a car accident leaves Daly with a broken arm and Johnson with a fractured jaw, sidelining the band for several months at a crucial point in their career. This is one of the reasons why Flaunt The Imperfection only makes a fleeting appearance on the American chart and, while becoming their first and only top ten album back home (the two singles, as per established tradition, land in the top 20), it doesn't have the big breakthrough that was within their reach and that many had hoped for.

Perhaps in the commendable attempt to strike while the iron's still hot, perhaps in a rush to make up for fate's cruel jokes, China Crisis promptly head back into the studio, and 1986 is the year of What Price Paradise. Production is handled by Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, already with the Madness, while entering the line-up keyboardist Brain Mc Neil. Whether due to an emptily contrived, overproduced sound that tries hard to appeal to American tastes, or due to a genuinely uninspired batch of songs, What Price Paradise is a heavy setback that gives a faded impression of the sophisticated, delightfully light band that had amazed everyone just a year earlier.

As troubles never come alone, the album is also a commercial flop, settling in the lower reaches of the UK chart (63), and only slightly improving on the performance American chart position of its predecessor (we're still talking about a modest number 114), thanks to the radio airplay earned by the single “The Arizona Sky”, one of the few tracks to escape the overall grayness, along with the delicate “Day’s Work For The Dayo’s Done”.

Following the debacle Crisis take a break, and in any case Virgin never stops believing in them, not to mention the good graces in which Becker has taken them under his wing. In 1989, with brand new material and three hundred thousand pounds of budget guaranteed by the bigwigs at label, the quintet sets off for the Hawaiian Islands, where they'll spend three dreamlike months as guests of none other than Walter Becker himself. Between scuba dives and sunlit hammocks (incredibly, the whole crew came home with a diving certificate), and with the help of exceptional session players of the calibre of Paulinho Da Costa and Jim Horn, Diary Of A Hollow Horse takes shape, which, in hindsight, sounds through and through like a side-project by Steely Dan.

Impossibly clean, the sound is filled with jazz-fusion leanings and a lush orchestral arrangement backing the now-familiar horn section, while the funk that had often defined the band becomes entirely acoustic, effectively transfigured. In short, it's glossy background music that in a few moments ("Day After Day", "Stranger By Nature") could easily have sprung from Donald Fagen's own creative impulses, and ultimately an unexpected touch of class.

Unfortunately, the record's intrinsic worth isn't matched by sales figures capable of justifying the huge financial outlay. As far as Virgin is concerned, the project can only continue if Gary and Eddie alone remain on the payroll: the two proudly reject the ultimatum, effectively sealing the end of the adventure.

In 1990 the inevitable Best Of, while all the members retire from the scene, except for Wilkinson, who carries on his career as a drummer. Gary enrolls in an art course, McNeill opens a recording studio in Glasgow, while Gazza throws himself into computing, though admitting he always keeps an ear out hoping for a certain phone call. In 1993, the call comes.

Despite Gary's grumbling about how hard it is, in the thick of the Nineties, to shake off the band's image as neatly groomed and anything but rock-oriented, China Crisis trustingly get back to work, and in August 1994 release, through the label indie Stardumb, an album with a bitterly ironic title: Warped By Success (swept up by success, more or less). The record is a product of the experience accumulated during the partnership with Becker, and while it does hold a few pleasant moments (above all the delicate "Hands On Wheel"), it adds nothing to what had already been said, and indeed reveals limitations that clash with the elaborate craftsmanship of the sound proposed.

The seemingly clumsy attempt to jump on the prevailing bandwagon ofunplugged that came about in 1995 with Acoustically Yours, while it didn't meet hopes for substantial sales (then again, how could it, for a band so decidedly out of fashion?), on the other hand has the undeniable merit of bringing back into the light, in fresh and appealing new clothes, a body of work that deserved a better fate.

After a decade of inactivity, in 2005 China Crisis reunited for a handful of live dates; Gary Daly released a studio album, "Land And Sea", under the name Muddyhead, while during 2007 an actual tour was organized to celebrate the 25 years since the release of their first record. In 2012, however, Ultimate Crisiscame out, a thorough double-CD retrospective featuring all their singles ("Christian" appears in theextended mix of the 12-inch, as does "This Occupation"), album tracks particularly significant ones from their beginnings right up to their final Virgin album, "Diary Of A Hollow Horse", plus a few gems, such as "Animalistic" (b-sides of "Black Man Ray"), "Scream Down At Me" and its flip side "Cucumber Garden".

Growing interest in their live shows gave Gary and Eddie the idea of returning to the studio with a new collection of unreleased material. After a rather elaborate production phase, Autumn in the Neighbourhood came out in 2015, twenty-one years after its predecessor, via Pledge Music. The fact that this album was produced through "fund raising" (Pledge is a platform that collects money directly from the public to finance recording projects) could have carried the risk of ending up with a record designed to please old "synth-oriented" fans, with the kind of nostalgic reunion that almost never produces anything good. Instead, the two leaders refused to be charmed by the digital sirens and, on the contrary, dusted off the most ethereal side of their songwriting, picking up the thread right where they had left it at the time of their last collaboration with Becker back in '89, unfurling an elegant pop sound, largely orchestral and mostly acoustic. It's a stylistic choice that couldn't be more fitting, matching perfectly with the delicious collection of eleven intimate, graceful songs, in which nostalgia isn't for the good old days, but instead takes the shape of a timeless melancholic mood, seasoned with jazzy touches and, at times, sophisticated folk flourishes. China Crisis have gone back to being themselves, largely shaking off the long shadow of Steely Dan, while still picking up all their secrets for making a record sound good.

If it's true that abundant traces of the chicest American combo of all time can be found in tracks like "Fool" and "Because My Heart", the rest of the album leans toward the bouncy midtempos that are the band's true trademark ("Smile"), polaroid snapshots harking back to the bucolic breezes of the "Wishful Thinking" video (the title track), delicate romantic pining ("Being In Love", and the folk sui generis of "My Sweet Delight"), refined lump-in-the-throat ballads like "Bernard" which, together with "Joy and the Spark", comes remarkably close to the Prefab Sprout of "Jordan: The Comeback", an instrumental that couldn't be more Bacharach-esque ("Tell Tale Signs") and a curious nod to vintage Belle and Sebastian with "Wonderful New World", which seems placed there to tell us: "Hey, we were here first".

Autumn in the Neighbourhood is an album for delicate souls who shun banality, the expression of a refined melancholy that carries a smile within it, and thus proves to be a welcome return.

Of the overwhelming post-punk wave that held a firm grip on the Anglo-American charts in the first half of the 1980s, China Crisis are among those who reaped less than they deserved. And while some of that can be put down to bad luck, the anomaly of being too British for American audiences and too American for English synth-pop also played a decisive role. "It's time we should talk about it", a frail-voiced Eddie sang in "Wishful Thinking", so we took him up on the invitation and told their story. The story of a pious wish, only partly fulfilled.

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Discography

Difficult Shapes & Passive Rhythms, Some People Think It's Fun To Entertain (Virgin, 1982)	7.5
Working With Fire And Steel Possible Pop Songs, Vol. 2 (Virgin, 1983)	7.5
Flaunt The Imperfection (Virgin, 1985)	8
What Price Paradise (Virgin, 1986)	5.5
Diary Of A Hollow Horse (Virgin, 1989)	7
Collection: The Very Best Of China Crisis (anthology, Virgin, 1990)
Warped By Success (Stardumb, 1994)	5.5
Acoustically Yours (Telegraph, 1995)	6
Ultimate Crisis (double CD, anthology, Music Club, 2012)
Autumn In The Neighbourhood (Pledge Music, 2015)	7.5