Stranglers

It's 1975 when Hugh Cornwell, Jean Jacques Burnel, Jet Black and Dave Greenfield form the Stranglers out of the ashes of Johnny Sox, and that same year the band will open for the queen of new wave, Patti Smith, on her UK tour.

It's thanks to this string of concerts that the four-piece really made a name for themselves. Their vinyl debut, though, didn't arrive until 1977, with the release of "Rattus Norvegicus". The public's anticipation for the album was confirmed by its entry into the UK Top 5. Theirs was an atypical brand of punk, one that tried to break free from the dogma of basic chords and stripped-down instrumentation, leaning heavily instead on keyboards.

Buoyed by this unexpected success, Cornwell and co. tried again that same year with "No More Heroes". An album that continued down the path set out by "Rattus Norvegicus", but one that also hinted at the first signs of trouble ahead. The band realized something needed to change, and in 1978 they opted for new solutions with "Black & White", blending the punk sound and Doors-like keyboards of their first two albums with a much heavier reliance on electronics. The result is a highly innovative sound, though still raw and uneven. Meanwhile, the audience had drifted further away, despite some of the band's publicity stunts designed to shock them back into attention.

The Stranglers finally realized that the charts weren't for them, and in 1979 they firmly chose the path of experimentation with "The Raven", their fourth record. The cover, with an unsettling black raven that looks like it stepped straight out of an Edgar Allan Poe story, already hints at the atmosphere awaiting inside the album. It's a dark, unsettling record: there's punk, there's new wave, there are still those Doors-inspired keyboards, and there's also a heavy dose of the electronics already tested, albeit in a far more superficial way, on "Black & White".

"The Raven" is an astonishing run of masterpieces that the Stranglers would struggle to match in their later work. The album kicks off at full throttle with "Longships". The title track, "The Raven", unleashes a glacial half-sung, half-spoken vocal over a backdrop of synths and guitars. Then comes the chaotic dance of "Dead Loss Angeles", a prelude to the horror-movie atmosphere of "Ice". And while "Baroque Bordello" plays on a ghostly choir and a pulsing rhythm section, "Nuclear Device" is perhaps the ultimate manifesto of their cold, robotic electronics.

Listening to the second half of the album feels like slipping from dream into nightmare, moving from the smooth, rarefied synth-pop of "Duchess" (the record's hit single) to the terrifying electronics of "Meninblack", which plunges the listener into a climate of infernal dread. Cornwell's alienated voice, run through various filters, becomes downright disturbing when it utters the line: "Healthy livestock so we can eat, Human flesh is porky meat, hee hee hee". Cannibalism. But what truly chills the blood is the alien Cornwell's schizophrenic laugh: "Hee hee hee".

After "Meninblack", it would be wise to calm down, maybe watch a comedy, and above all convince yourself that aliens don't exist, or at least that they're far away from us. But there's still time for "Genetix", and after these few minutes everything falls silent: the nightmare is over.

"The Raven" is the Stranglers' crowning achievement and one of the boldest ventures of British new wave. After this album, the English band would let themselves be swept up by pop melodies, though never sinking into blandness or grayness. Critics, perhaps still shaken by "Meninblack", would act as if "The Raven" never existed. But maybe that's exactly right: perhaps this masterpiece never existed at all, and is nothing more than a dream - or rather a hallucination built from keyboards and electronics.

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12/11/2006