Metamatic Forums John Foxx John Foxx John Foxx sings the blues

There's a lot of bluesy, jazzy elements which turns up in a lot of John's music. This fusion of blues-electro doesn't always do it for me, but I think it's an interesting style, which is seldom discussed.

Forgotten Years, Everyone, Friendly Fire, the improv on Drive (live or on Impossible), Once In A While and even Cinema.

All these songs have this influence to my ears. What's everybody else's view on them?

Blues-electro? Well taking these tracks as an example it’s definitely a hit and miss affair for me, and If it’s anything like Forgotten Years then I really hope not, I completely hate Johns singing on there, it’s the worst track on SC for me, I just can’t listen to it.
Everyone, is a track I like as it really sounds like a Japan song to me, just minus David’s vocals, and Friendly Fire has always sounded like early League, Oakley would be right at home singing this one. Cinema is a curious one for me, sometimes it works, but other times when I hear it I think WTF, the music just about saves it for me though. Once In A While is a track I file under the same category as Forgotten Years, it’s a wasted moment on C&B for me, and I skip it.

I kind of would like to see John take more risk’s artistically with the model he works to now, and If he were to make an entire album under the influence of Blues Jazz then I would hope it would take tracks like Impossible and Drive as a jumping off point, and with these as flag posts I might take whatever results to heart, but if he were to shadow instead a more obvious type of Blues Jazz singer or sound then it could be 1985 all over again...

Me, too. For some inexplicable reason it reminds me of the cover version of "Puttin' on the Ritz" by Taco. That might just be my problem, though . . .

Maybe im deaf, but i dont hear, or dont want to hear blues in Johns tracks. Although i can hear it on these ones.*bemused icon*

Maybe that explains why I don't like that Friendly Fire track.

Listening again, I can see what Alex S is suggesting, I didn’t recognised that a classifiable style was in use or maybe the inspiration for the singing, but it does appear to link certain songs.
I was too harsh on Cinema in my previous post here, but at least now I have an explanation for why when I listen to it I always get this image of John snapping his fingers like a crooner in a smoke filled bar singing to the last people still out on the town in the late early hours before sunrise

Ha, just listened to Taco online, Forgotten Years is kinda like the slower lost cousin of Ritz

Forgotten Years is dreadful (IMO) so the less 'blues stuff' Foxx does the better as far as I am concerned.