STRANGLERS - Giants

Talking about the Stranglers after the sad loss of Cornwell in the Nineties means trying to analyze a different band. Quite different from "IV/Rattus Norvegicus", from the essential "The Raven" and from the single "Golden Brown". Light years away.

The new flesh clothing the historic English post-punk band was neatly summed up in their 2004 effort, that "Norfolk Coast" which gave us a project now oriented towards essentially more pop-rock idioms. Shortly after came "Suite XVI" (2006), which followed similar patterns, accentuating the use of keyboards with a clear sixties/seventies reference – with the exception of the more punk "Summat Outanowt". Today we find them consistent with the path they've charted, paying ever greater attention to the songwriting but still failing to resolve several issues of identity and structure, which very often leave the whole thing unbalanced.

The beating heart of the record is the central triptych "Freedom Is Insane"-"Giants"-"Lowlands", where Lou Reed-esque echoes combine with sharp, playful organ phrasing, repeatedly flipping on themselves while still holding a solid shape halfway between lighter 70s prog-rock and a Sixties-leaning pop side, reworked in an open, nuanced way.

As soon as we step outside this melodic enclosure, though, doubts start piling up. The instrumental opener "Another Camden Afternoon", with its blues-rock stretched out one time too many, flattens the listener's mood right from the start. The derivative guitar phrasing of "Boom Boom" and "Time Was Once On My Side" – hormonally spent – gives the impression that the Stranglers only had a hazy idea of the work itself rather than a cohesive artistic vision. There's plenty of energy, and an attempt to transcend the predictable sense of nostalgia for a past now gone, but the result is a rosary of melodies with a detached soul. The electro-tango episode "Adios (Tango)" is the grotesque confirmation of this, leaving us facing a vague musical identity, happy to grab at any stylistic foothold just to try to communicate something.

In conclusion, even though the quality of certain compositions may show a partly successful mutation of the Stranglers' sound towards a classic rock-band idiom, the rest collapses under even the most superficial scrutiny.

A fragile work lacking any well-defined conceptual throughline; the result of a band whose past may be too important for them to actually change.

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15/04/2012