I'm going to review a CD I own in a weird and inconsistent manner. If I acknowledge these flaws, it mean they don't exist now.
So in 1981 and at the age of only 23, Gary Numan had conquered the UK music scene with three consecutive number-one albums, two number-one singles and a further three top ten hits.
Then he decided to quit touring with three spectacular ‘Farewell Concerts’ at Wembley Stadium.
Although this was not intended to be a sweeping conclusion to his domination of the charts and more likely an attempt to emulate David Bowie’s surprise retirement of ‘The Spiders From Mars’ almost a decade prior, everyone saw it as that.
Having lambasted Numan as “the thin white puke” and presumably satisfied at Gary’s admittance of them getting to him in ‘I Die: You Die’, the press were presumably keen to ignore him and move on.
In response, Gary Numan released what was essentially a breakup album.
Over the course of ‘Dance’, Gary probably steals from Japan and Brian Eno in equal measures, although some might argue that Gary’s ever-alienated vocals had finally found a home in an equally off-kilter and despondent set of songs.
Stricken by the continued backlash to his material, and definitely exhausted by the runaway success of the last twenty-four months, ‘Dance’ strips back all of the synthesised rock stylings Gary had spent the last three years and four albums constructing.
In its place lie four of the sparsest arrangements of his career on side one, and seven of his most peculiar on side two.
‘Slowcar To China’ opens the album as a statement of intent, that intent being that Gary has no qualms about changing everything in his style for the sake of innovation, even if that means sacrificing commercial success. To be fair, it did work for David Bowie’s Berlin trilogy, although Gary didn’t have the same kind of laurels to yet rest upon.
’Slowcar To China’ hangs around a fantastic baseline courtesy of Mick Karn from the band Japan, both it and a steady artificial drumbeat form the backbone of a track supposedly about a failed love affair with a prostitute, in reality a seething rebuttal towards a former girlfriend who sold their story to the papers.
In fact, most of ‘Dance’ and parts of the next year’s ‘I, Assassin’ would be thinly-veiled barbs aimed at Numan’s former girlfriends. Gary has revealed that ‘Dance’ was informed by at least three previous relationships.
Some of these were well-formed displays of betrayal and emotional turmoil, others lapsed into lazy misogyny and pulp-like caricatures.
‘Night Talk’ lambasts the narrator’s heroin-addicted lover, in reality a thinly-disguised take on bassist and co-writer Paul Gardiner, with lyrics like “How you smile and pretend it's fun / Do you laugh when the rats come round to play?”
The bare instrumentation gives the song an appropriately austere feel, it sounds like something you could hear playing in the background of ‘Trainspotting’.
Grinding synths alongside an uneasy-sounding bassline, coupled with Gary’s commanding vocal take grant a convincing atmosphere of uneasiness.
‘A Subway Called You’ is again home to some lyrics that are weirdly perverse and poetic in equal measure. “We drift like gas on someone else’s bed”, again it’s like one of those old pulp novels worming its way into your ears, not in an entirely bad way either.
That said, the trend of having a saxophone break two-thirds of the way through an unrelated song starts here, like a moray eel in the fish tank it comes. Although the trend wouldn’t begin to putrefy until 1983’s ‘Warriors’, here it’s more of an oddity in an album already packed to the gills with oddities.
‘Cry, The Clock Said’ still ranks as the longest studio track Numan ever recorded, at a full ten minutes long and documents a failing relationship.
It is perhaps unique amongst ‘Dance’ in that Gary here is resigned to the idea that “feelings change” and he’ll “forget one of these days”. There are no attempts to shift blame, name-call, or even protest the reality that sometimes things are never going to work out the way that you want them to after all.
The drum machine used does sound uncannily like a broken clock, and not in a gimmicky way. Maybe it’s meant to be slowly winding down in the way that the relationship is said to be, or maybe it just sounded cool.
Some nice ‘Telekon’-like sugary piano sounds serve to soothe Numan’s genuinely heartbroken vocals, and the late Nash The Slash makes a guest appearance on violin.
‘She’s Got Claws’ whirls into view at the start of side two, and all attempts at subtlety are blasted away with a saxophone tuning up. Seriously, the actual tuning up sounds are heard. ‘Dance’ is technically full of missed cues and musical errors, but ’She’s Got Claws’ shows them off at their most egregious.
After four well-mixed and mastered albums, I’m shocked at how poorly integrated into the mix the saxophone is.
Altogether, ’She’s Got Claws’ is pretty emblematic of the exaggerated emotional wound-licking and finger-pointing that ‘Dance’ lapses into a little too often.
‘She’s Got Claws’ was the sole single from the album and charted at number 6.
‘Crash’ is probably my favourite track off the album.
A punchy synth rocker and potentially a good single choice, bridging the synth mini-orchestras and guitar crunches of ‘Telekon’ with ‘Dance’s sparser weirdness.
So naturally it wasn’t a single.
‘Crash’ also shows off that Gary could hold some impressively long high notes when he wanted to. Aside from some ‘woah-oh’ vocalisations throughout the rest of the decade, Gary wouldn’t employ this kind of vocal work again until the likes of ‘Jagged’ and ‘Splinter’.
‘Boys Like Me’ is full of Arabian melodies and off-kilter rhythms, and retreads the ‘breakup aftermath’ of ‘She’s Got Claws’ only two tracks on, without the catchiness, or even the punchiness, leaving it as this meandering go-nowhere of a track.
Singer Connie Filapello appears during the second half, speaking something along the lines of “I’m angry too so leave me alone”. This could have been an interesting track which presented both sides of the breakup, and distinguished it further from ‘She’s Got Claws’.
Unfortunately, Filapello’s vocals were in Italian and don’t have as much impact as they could have had
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Of note is the fact that Filapello’s vocals contain a repeated mention of the name ‘Zara’ is a reference to another former girlfriend. Apparently she was another manipulative figure in Gary’s life. Perhaps it’s intentional that this track is a limp retread of lovers gone by, as some sort of insinuation that these affairs all became faded xeroxes of one another in Gary’s mind.
Either way, I’d peg it as the weakest track on the album, although not the most unnecessary. This track still directly informs the mood and emotional tone of ‘Dance’, whereas the final two tracks (‘You Are, You Are’ and ‘Moral’) do not.
’Stories’ was debuted during the ’Teletour’s UK leg the previous year. Stylistically, it’s fairly similar to the stuff on ‘Telekon’, and the lyrics document a mother’s accidental reunion with her estranged son in a restaurant many years later.
The track shows off Numan’s ability to construct and tell an entire narrative within a few minutes, an ability he would gradually forgo in favour of increasingly personal lyrics throughout the decade.
In a weird way, this is one of the more ‘classic’ Numan tracks in that regard.
‘My Brother’s Time’ is another track I rarely listen to, and it’s another retread of previous ideas, this time employing the clock-like drums, mournful piano, and resigned vocals of ‘Cry, The Clock Said’.
A better effort than ‘Boys Like Me’, and arguably a more succinct success than ‘Cry, The Clock Said’, and featuring a good bassline, although an out-of-place saxophone solo serves as a grim reminder of things to come.
End credits music, it would have served as a better closer to the album than the following two tracks, which are basically retreads of themes explored better in earlier efforts.
The lyric “what’s done is done and everything’s different somehow” is either simple and effective or self-impressed and petulant, and I can’t tell which.
‘You Are, You Are’ sounds like a carbon copy of ‘I Die: You Die’, down to the handclaps in the opening. There’s some nice strings in there, but it’s a pretty basic throwaway track, with lyrics talking about the fakeness and artificiality of past lovers and critics, which you might recognise as the theme of ‘I Die: You Die’ and pretty much the rest of the album so far. So this could have gone on the chopping block with not much lost.
‘Moral’ is an intentional rip from Gary’s past, being a retread of ‘Metal’ with a new set of lyrics attacking the New Romantic movement as a bunch of posers.
Musically, the track is completely new with the lead instrument being a feedback-drenched guitar which actually works pretty well.
Tubeway Army drummer Jess Lidyard makes an unexpected return, and the track turns out pretty well. If nothing else, it shows Gary’s willingness to deconstruct reinterpret his own work only two years on, with interesting results.
The track about a machine longing to be human becomes a potshot at the latest group of posers on the scene. At the very least, it’s a pretty funny and self-deprecating move on Gary’s part.
The 1999 CD remastering adds five bonus tracks.
’Stormtrooper In Drag’ is honestly one of my favourite tracks of Numan’s and certainly one of the best of the ‘Dance’ era. ’Stormtrooper In Drag’ is a fantastically gloomy new wave glam-tinged stomper of a track, not unlike Bauhaus.
Co-written with bandmate and longtime friend Paul Gardiner like the B-side ‘Night Talk’, the track deals with Gary’s frustration with Gardiner’s heroin addiction.
Packed with fantastic guitar lines, the track slinks through an alley of Burroughs-esque homoerotic imagery, employed to show a sense of comradeship fractured by Gardiner’s addiction, one that would tragically result in his death in 1984.
‘Face To Face’ was the B-side to the Dramatis single ‘Love Needs No Disguise’, and with it’s themes of dissociation it could have fit pretty nicely on the ‘Dance’ album.
A notable lyric is the brilliantly blasphemous boast of “there is no God so pray to me”.
‘Dance’ was the only outtake from the sessions, and I’m unsure as to why that is. It’s a powerful and minimal ballad with the stark refrain “and I would die for you”. Coming from the artist characterised as an android from both fans and detractors in his prime, this stands out as pretty damn emotional. It sounds genuine, next to the sometimes overblown emotional scope of the parent album, to then come across something so contrite and understated is disarming.
For what it’s worth, Gary did briefly bring ‘Dance’ back into the setlist for his warm-up gig for the ‘Pure’ tour in late 2000, where it sat comfortably alongside the similarly emotionally bare material from that album.
Maybe that’s why it was cut, it shows too much.
‘Exhibition’ was exclusive to the twelve-inch single version of ‘She’s Got Claws’, and is another fairly nice and minimal narrative song like ’Stories’. Also like ’Stories’, ‘Exhibition’ uses the same drum preset pattern, albeit slightly pitch-shifted this time.
This same drum pattern previously appeared in the live version of ‘Bombers’, ‘Remember I Was Vapour’, ‘On Broadway’, ‘Telekon’ and (possibly) ‘I Die: You Die’.
Credit where it’s due, Numan got a lot of milage out of that pattern. ‘Exhibition’ would mark the preset’s final appearance in his discography.
The bonus tracks close out with ‘I Sing Rain’, which is pretty much exactly what the title says. Gary sings the word rain alongside various wordless cries over a nice watery synth sound. I like the synth sound, it’d have worked better as part of a full song, and it’s kind of disappointing to hear a Numan B-side that just sounds like a B-side. The fact that this was the seven-inch flipside to ‘She’s Got Claws’ rather than ‘Exhibition’ was probably a mistake.
Although not classed as a concept album, one could characterise side one as a thumping hangover and side two as the preceding wild night out after a bad breakup. The decadence and sheer sonic weirdness then provide context for the restraint and austerity of the preceding side.
The narrative could hypothetically begin with the bizarre breakup documented in ‘She’s Got Claws’, all brash and sneering bravado as the narrator slams the door on his last love.
This reaches an apex with the soaring ‘Crash’, where his dismissal extends to critics and society in general all “hung up on the time, hung up on the age”.
’Boys Like Me’, ’Stories’ and ‘My Brother’s Time’ would then deal with various incidents created and relayed throughout the night, before resolving themselves into the general ramblings of ‘You Are, You Are’ and the non-sequitur ‘Moral’.
In this way, the ‘arc’ of side one would begin with the fantasy breakup of ‘Slowcar To China’, transform themselves into the ‘grounded’ fantasy of ‘Night Talk’, lapse into blurry ideas of romance in ‘A Subway Called You’, and collapse in the quiet admission of defeat and loss in ‘Cry, The Clock Said’.
Just a weird idea, but I think it’s an interesting way of trying to rationalise the disparate elements into something more cohesive and along the lines of earlier albums. Again though, much of ‘Dance’s charm does lie in its fragmented nature.
So that’s ‘Dance’, the first Gary Numan album I am comfortable with saying contains some subpar tracks, for better or for worse.
It’s too weird and full of mistakes and improvisation, especially when compared to the precision of the preceding ‘machine’ trilogy of ‘Replicas’, ‘The Pleasure Principle’ and ‘Telekon’.
I do understand and appreciate the artistic integrity it takes to be willing to sacrifice everything you represent in order to start again. But, at risk of stating the obvious, you are still starting again.
There are couple of odd track choices, studio experiments like ‘You Are, You Are’ and ‘Moral’ detract from the genuine anguish lurking within the rest of the record and feel like some kind of compromise to tack some familiar material on the end.
The improvisation throughout the album is a double edged blade for sure.
On the one hand it lends the album a distinctly organic feel, and it sounds awkwardly honest, like someone drunkenly spilling their guts out to you.
On the other hand, this comes at the cost of the quality of material which could have been better honed or cut entirely in some places.
Does ‘Cry, The Clock Said’ have to be ten minutes long, for example? Probably not, but a shorter edit might defeat the purpose of the whole thing.
I don’t know, ‘Dance’s approach is hit and miss, but it remains genuine, and I guess there’s something to be said for that. In a world full of online spats and ‘diss-tracks’, ‘Dance’ ends up looking fairly classy in comparison. In being unafraid to show himself as both human and a fairly flawed one at that, Gary comes out of it pretty well.
Musically, one could argue that by being weirdly sort of dated upon release, ‘Dance’ has aged fairly well. Certainly the first side’s sparse arrangements leave very little to date them by, but Gary’s refusal to engage with the synth pop trends he had basically set means that he ends up not being bound by them.
It’s a pretty clever decision in hindsight.
Altogether, ’Dance’ was and remains a very believable document of what kind of impact fame and success have upon someone who by their own admission was not prepared for that kind of success.
