STRANGLERS - Norfolk Coast

Touching, commendable Stranglers. After the departure of Hugh Cornwell, now fourteen years ago (!), and the simultaneous recruitment of Paul Roberts on vocals and a new guitarist (first John Ellis, then Baz Warne), the bad boys in black looked very much like a band carrying on purely by force of inertia, just to keep happy the many ageing fans still living out the myth of these damned old (former) punk rockers. It has to be said that, alongside some albums that were frankly insipid, released over the course of the 90s (however much they were occasionally enlivened by marginal flashes of decency), attention towards the Stranglers had already been reawakened with the double live album "5 Live 01", on which Paul Roberts' considerable vocal abilities, as he tackles without embarrassment a repertoire that's gruelling to sustain, could hardly go unnoticed. We don't think we're saying anything heretical if we consider this frontman, who came up through an adventurous underground apprenticeship, technically better equipped than his glorious, untouchable predecessor Cornwell. Of course, that alone isn't enough, couldn't be enough, to look at the stranglers with anything beyond simple human sympathy.

All romantic considerations, before this "Norfolk Coast", which certainly won't be a masterpiece destined for the rock history books but, we can guarantee, contains more than one good reason to be listened to with attention. For starters, you'll find here a verve and a nastiness that many young indie bands should draw from (not that it would be easy, given also the extraordinary skill of a pool of musicians of a higher calibre), and then it's a thoroughly useful primer thanks to which the many for whom the Stranglers are little more than a name from a rock encyclopedia will become curious to find out more about them.

As a reminder that still today very few indie bands (since that's the current benchmark to measure them against) can boast a rhythm section made up of J. J. Brunel and Jet Black, and no one, and I mean no one, has a keyboardist like Dave Greenfield, along comes a stunning one-two punch made up of the title track and the single "Big Thing Coming": a good six minutes that, with no pretension whatsoever and a unique energy, could easily be slipped in among the outtakes of... "Rattus Norvegicus"! Between vocal lines ranging from sinister à-la Andrew Eldrich baritones to more reassuring power-pop tones, a devastating bass, lightning-fast keyboard arpeggios and backing vocals with a psych-pop flavour, the album's opening is the kind that doesn't go unnoticed. Pity that the following, poppier "Long Black Veil" dusts off arrangements we had hoped were buried for good among the notes of Mission at their worst, and brings us back, momentarily, down to earth.

It's just a misstep, since vigour is quickly regained with "I've Been Wild", just as the second pop-leaning approach, "Dutch Moon", is far more on target, ending up as one of the most engaging tracks, with that brushed, swing-driven drumming and those jazzy guitar touches that recall the clean, romantic atmospheres of the "Feline" era. The laid-back but successful self-quotation continues with "Lost Control", which lifts wholesale the sounds of the hulking keyboards from the unforgettable single "Who Wants The World", while "Into The Fire" hands back the remains of a psychedelia drowned in robotic arabesques close to "The Raven" and "Meninblack". And, speaking of psychedelia, this time arriving pure and unmediated, how can one not be captivated listening to "Tuckers Grave", in which Dave Greenfield, after thirty years of "circling around it", performs a Doors-like scale in this hushed dark-lysergic prayer, while Paul Roberts unspools in spoken word all the pathos he's capable of, so well backed by the whispered choruses of the other dark angels?

There's still room for yet another, but by no means predictable, sparkling ode to the Stranglers of old, "I Don't Agree", for another and this time less successful bit of swing, the negligible and out-of-place "Sanfte Kuss", and for an epilogue that could perhaps have been better than "Mine All Mine", which winks at catchy, rather retro pop-rock crowd-pleasing.

The risk is that "Norfolk Coast", amid a few minor lapses in tone and the flourishing renewal of noble, inimitable self-references, might end up crushed under the weight of a thirty-year discography brimming with treasures, but that can't take away the sense that this is the best Stranglers record in twenty years. And, all things considered, that's no small thing: an unexpected, pleasant surprise.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

12/12/2006