Ultravox

Rock criticism, as we know, has always fed on disposable clichés, handy for wrapping up a lazy, superficial review in a hurry. One of these has always dogged Ultravox in their “post-John Foxx” incarnation, just as they were emerging from post-punk and stepping into the “electronic new wave” of the Eighties. The easy narrative goes that once Scotsman Midge Ure (singer and guitarist, previously of Slick and Rich Kids with ex-Sex Pistol Glen Matlock) took the helm, the band's sound became far more accessible, leaning into a certain saccharine “pop-romantic” taste that was fashionable at the time and later pushed into one too many commercial excesses by bands like Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran.

It's clear that whoever wrote that never listened closely to “Vienna”, the debut of Ultravox's new era, nor probably to any of the albums that followed up to “Lament”, which was effectively the swan song of this line-up (“U-Vox”, in fact, would merely be the antechamber to their split). Perhaps some ayatollah of “hardline” criticism – just as with their mentors Kraftwerk – expected Ultravox's music to remain monolithic and unchanging forever, denying it the chance to evolve while staying true to itself. Even more likely, someone chose to judge Ultravox's music without the exclamation mark (dropped once Foxx left) purely on the strength of a few catchy hit singles, without bothering to check whether there was more to those albums. Here, we'll attempt the opposite approach.

In 1979, punk is on the wane. Blondie and Cars have already unleashed disco-punk on the world, a danceable, polished variant of the “no future” of Ramones, Clash and Sex Pistols. In Britain, the first synth-pop and dark-punk bands are starting to emerge. And a quieter, more melancholy mood is taking hold among the younger generation, one destined to pervade the Eighties. Ultravox manage to capture the spirit of the decade, distilling it into a new musical formula.

For Midge Ure, Ultravox are “a rock band that uses the synthesizer”. This gives rise to a sound built on the balance between electronic experimentation and crepuscular melodicism as its cornerstone. Lush synthesizers, obsessive rhythms, violin virtuosity and taut guitar solos are its main ingredients, as brilliantly demonstrated by “Vienna”, the masterpiece of this new chapter for the British band and for Eighties electronic rock. The album takes Europe by storm thanks to the decadent allure of the title track, the first Ultravox song to chart. It's a piece of symphonic pop, masterfully arranged by Billy Currie, with Ure's vocals more melodramatic than ever: his cry of “This means nothing to me” isn't meant to express resigned indifference, but a lament for a lost past.

Also bringing the band unexpected commercial success are the ultra-fast electropop of “All Stood Still”, the vigorous synth-pop of “Sleepwalk” (with Ure's vocals recalling Trevor Horn's on “Drama” by Yes, alongside Cann's aggressive drumming and Currie's delightful viola in the finale) and the more conventional refrain of “Passing Strangers”.

On closer inspection, though, the album's true worth lies in other tracks. Starting with the opening “Astradyne”, seven minutes of experimental electronics echoing the golden days of Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, as does “Mr X”, another example of this robotic sound that seems to have stepped straight out of “Man Machine”: it's the story of a mysterious traveller narrated by drummer Warren Cann's voice in glacial tones over a lush bed of synths, with Billy Currie's viola bursting in at the end.

The album's cultural manifesto, meanwhile, is “New Europeans”, with Ure's searing guitar accompanied by the obsessive pulse of the electronic drums and the abstract flourishes of the keyboards, which give way in the finale to a magnificent piano.

The Europe of Ultravox is a continent corroded by decadence, portrayed through almost Hollywood-style glamour scenarios (in the vein of “Julia”), yet capable of casting an uneasy eye toward the future: “On a crowded beach/ washed by the sun/ He puts his headphones on/ His modern world revolves around the synthesizer's song/ Full of future thoughts and thrills/ his senses slip away/ He is a European legacy/ A culture for today” (from “New Europeans”). Musically, Ure and co. carry out an operation that's the reverse of what Trevor Horn was doing in those years: rather than subverting the structures of the pop song, they convert them into an art form, through cross-pollination with electronics (the keyboards) and classical music (the violin).

The albums that followed, up to “Lament”, would confirm the strength of the formula, always accompanied by wonderful videos steeped in dark expressionism and decadent glam, in the style of Bowie and Roxy Music. In Italy, it was the invaluable Carlo Massarini, with his (sorely missed) TV show “Mister Fantasy”, who introduced them to the public. Epic and decadent, elegant and melancholy, Ultravox coloured new wave with the abstract hues of electronics, managing to humanise it thanks to a formidable melodic gift and compositions as intricate as they were moving. Alongside Japan's David Sylvian, they reached the highest peaks of Eighties electronic rock. Today, their sound, already a descendant of Kraftwerk and Berlin-era Bowie, has scattered into a thousand streams, but lives on, “transplanted” into much of the electronic pop-rock output of recent years.

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13/11/2006