This album was the knife that severed 32 years of Ultravox fandom for me. It has three songs that admirably reach the level of "Quartet" but the rest of it plumbs new depths. And this from the band that gave us "Uvox!" Ultravox Mk II reforming for a tour? Fine! Sign me up. Make a new album after not just water, but practically oceans under the bridge? Uh, not so fast. The fly in the ointment was the evidence on hand from the solo career of singer Midge Ure. His first solo album, released before Ultravox even broke up was a hit or miss affair consisting of faux-Vox at best and pure sap at worst. His second ["Answers To Nothing"] was a thematically coherent piece that unfortunately, didn’t amount to much. The third ["Pure"] was a severe embarrassment of faux-Irish drivel. “Pure,” the fourth album was an improvement on the third, but still, nothing to write home about. I only bothered with getting his fifth ["Move Me"] years after it was released, and it was pretty lackluster. Only the surprisingly vital instrumental “Monster” was up to snuff.
Around 1985 I finally realized that Midge Ure was not going to be the shining light that he was in my musical universe from 1980 to roughly 1984. The cold light of day began to color my view of his talents and really, his last quarter century of work has meant very little to me. So he called the old gang together. What reason would I have to believe that the result of their labors would be worth my $16.00 when his solo work had so clearly not been? Thus the nagging apprehension that this new album, when it materialized would be a big letdown. When the title and cover were unveiled, the clouds on the horizon darkened a little more. It took a lot of hubris to call an album “Brilliant,” especially when the last time these guys [minus Cann] wrote an album, the results were catastrophic. When the CD arrived, I put it in my CD player and drove to the gym.
The opening cut, “Live” came on and I was surprised to hear a track that would have made the cut on “Quartet.” Not their strongest album, but its weaknesses lie more in the area of production than songwriting. Truth be told, I was optimistically hoping that this album might reach the quality level of “Quartet” or perhaps “Ingenuity,” and this song was almost exceeding my highest level of expectation. The middle eight, however was clumsy and leaden. Still, it didn’t diminish the strength of the rest of the song too much. This was clearly an Ultravox song, not a Midge Ure solo track, thankfully.
The second song was “Flow” and it had some nice synth flourishes in the intro that touched [however lightly] on EBM sounds. Ure was in fine voice here even if the lyrics were his typical dish of self-analytical balderdash. The tremolo effects on the guitar solo in the middle eight were a new sound for Ultravox and I liked the end result quite a bit, actually. One of the highlights of this track is Billy Currie’s solo on the fadeout. I always love it when a hot solo is located in a fadeout groove. It speaks of the band’s confidence that they consider it a throwaway, implying greater thrills ahead. I was shocked by this point of the album. Would it shatter my admittedly low level of expectation?
I’d read reactions online to the first single, “Brilliant,” and scuttlebutt had been mixed on the results, largely down to people scratching their heads over Ure’s delivery on this number. Let’s see. It begins with a peppy, syncopated pop bounce alien to Ultravox, but catchy enough on its own. Then, Ure began singing. This is not your father’s Midge Ure, to put it mildly! He sings in a thin, emaciated voice I’ve never heard from him before. He sounds like his vocal was recorded while curled up in a shipping crate… in the next room… while he was nursing a hernia!! What in the hell was he thinking? Why was he singing in this horribly new vocal style?! His vocal performance scuttles the entire number with its distancing effect. It’s a catchy enough tune but I really didn’t want to hear this singing. This is the last thing I would have imagined hearing following his triumphant vocals on their 2009 concerts as evidenced on “Return To Eden.”
I was recently listening to Scott Walker’s “The Drift” and it hit me like a ton of bricks! Midge Ure is trying to sing like Scott Walker did on his last two albums on “Brilliant!” The big difference? Scott Walker is singing in a strangulated voice far from his confident baritone because not only is he attempting to leave his early fame in the past, but because he is crafting monumental albums of existential horror that will reverberate for years whereas Midge Ure is doing the same old stuff. Never discount the influence of Walker on Ure. Not only did he clone Walkers’s arrangement of “No Regrets” just a few years later, substituting synths for cynical session pros, but “The Electrician” was a big influence on “Vienna.” The former is a harrowing and poetic account of why and how a man can torture another man and the latter is “just a holiday romance.”
The fourth track was “Change.” I was shocked to hear something this dull, methodical, and plodding after the first three, decently paced numbers. Worse still, Ure chose to deliver his poor lyrics, again, as if he were curled up in a fetal position whilst passing a kidney stone. The monotonous rhythm track sounded like a drum machine hitting 72 BPM in a 4/4 beat with while slathered with lots of wet reverb. The song seemed far longer than its 4:31 running time.
In the nick of time the next song, “Rise” is segued into “Change’s” outro. The song actually has a spark of life that has been missing for the last two songs, surprisingly. The sequenced synths reveal a bit of a Giorgio Moroder influence for the first time with this band and the result is the beginnings of a new branch on the Ultravox tree. The arrangement alone is good enough to overcome Ure’s mediocre lyrics. Unfortunately, he persists on ruining this song on the middle eight with the return of what I’m going to call “The Gnome” from here on out. The way he’s overusing this vocal delivery suggests that he thinks this is his ace in the hole, vocally. He couldn’t be
more wrong. Fortunately, Billy Currie tries to save the day afterward with a vintage Vox synth solo on the ARP [or its digital equivalent], but it’s almost too late to overcome the bad feelings that Ure’s vocals are casting over this album like a pall of industrial smog.
Another segue [well, they worked on "Vienna" and "Rage In Eden"] brings the turgid piano ballad “Remembering.” It’s the shortest track on the album, but you won’t notice that. It’s followed by “Hello,” a
dreaded mid-tempo number wherein Ure’s vocals are in his normal range for a change. But his vocals are so heavily processed they begin to reek of American cheese. The album, by this time, is falling fatally, on the weakness of both Ure’s vocal stylings and the recording/mixing of same.
The production applied to his singing by the band with co-producer Stephen Lipson, apparently suggests that they haven’t run across a plug-in effect that they didn’t like! This same thing had happened on the last of his solo albums I’d heard ["Move Me"] with all of his vocals being covered with various filters that have an emotionally distancing effect that renders the end result sterile and ineffectual. The project seemed to be crashing and burning. Could the band manage to salvage this album in its second half?
The album continues with the track “One,” but you’ll probably wish it hadn’t! It begins with an atmosphere so still, you’ll be checking your own pulse just to make sure you hadn’t expired by accident! Ure’s vocals are heavily filtered on a shortwave radio in the next room as after a full minute, the song’s plodding beat begins. It’s sheer Chinese-water torture to accompany The Gnome’s lead vocals. So leaden is the pace that you’ll never believe it was only 4:43! Did I say that “Stranger Within” starts to drag around the five minute mark? Slap my wrists! What I wouldn’t give for an injection of that right about now! To hear this poor excuse for a song is to know what it’s like to slip into a coma.
Then with track nine, "Fall," the killing blow was struck. The album, which had teetered at the precipice for over a half an hour, edging closer here, backing up there… finally fell gracelessly off of the cliff right here and hit the rocks below. Not a prety sight. This is without a doubt the most
dire and tuneless thing that not only Ultravox but also Midge Ure under his own name, have ever conspired to release! You know you are in for a bad time when yet another plodding, lumbering track [enough reason for bruxism right there] dares to feature a hook that is in the words of Eno “a dismal, pathetic chord sequence!”
It’s a descending series of guitar chords, not unlike the one that distinguished “Moon Madness” on “UVOX.” That it appears once is a tragedy. That Ure has determined that it is hook worthy and as such, is repeated throughout the song indicates a lack of intelligence and objectivity on his part. That the rest of the group let him get away with this is proof that this enterprise was doomed from the start.
The next cut, “Lie” is the single bright spot on side two. Like Ultravox you grew up with, it features reasonable singing from Ure. The Gnome is nowhere to be heard this time. The tune wouldn’t make you forget the glory of “Vienna,” but amid the fiascos that surround it, it’s enough to make it seem like a “Systems Of Romance” outtake in comparison! Even still, it’s saddled with a dreadful, unimaginative middle eight, like virtually every song on this album, that really indicates large problems for this once capable band.
“Satellite” is the singular quick-paced cut on the second half of the album. It’s lively, yet still skirts mediocrity, due to Ure’s space-filling lyrics and the truckload of effects used on his vocals here. The band have gone on record as endorsers of the Melodyne system and while it had been abused, in my opinion, throughout the album, it really hit the brick wall here. Ure’s voice has been sculpted like silly putty on this track. The standout element of this cut is definitely Currie’s vibrant viola solo. Listening here, you can almost imagine that you are hearing one of his fine solo albums. Better you had picked one of those up!
And then it all comes crashing to a pitiable end with the final cut, “Contact.” The Gnome is back for one more twist of the killing blade. While “One” and “Fall” are definitely the worst songs Ultravox have ever recorded, this track is number three in that list. Ure sings like he’s going to expire from the consumption. And if you were singing these lyrics, maybe you would too.
“What’s wrong, who’s right?
Sad machines won’t talk to me tonight
No questions looking for answers
No voices except inside my mind”“Sad machines won’t talk to me tonight!” That’s a lyric on par with these from Simon LeBon in my Hall Of Fame for Bad Lyrics. The whole affair grinds the already faltering album to a merciless halt. It sounds like some horrifying cabaret parody with a ninety five year old man trying to sing over a heart lung machine burbling away in the background as twee synth loops form a gently chugging rhythm bed from hell. The first time I listened to the whole album and that was the ending, I have to say that I was incensed.
“That’s it??!!”
Moreover, the more that I listened to this album, [a good 15-20 times upon its arrival] the act of doing so only made me angry as the horror unfolded. I am incredulous that Ultravox had the poor judgement to let this one out of the closet, especially after the career-killing “UVOX” debacle. What’s ultimately even more annoying about this album is that while the lows are even worse than that album, the three tracks here that I actually like annoy me all the more for their presence! It’s the sense of squandered opportunity that this album delivers in spades. While objectively, this is a
slightly better album than “UVOX” overall, it actually
feels worse to listen to because the numerous low points are
cataclysmically bad in ways that leave the “UVOX” material very much in the shade.
To make a point of comparison, the last time I heard an album with a comparable blend of good points to bad by an artist who had really needed to overcome the enormous badwill generated by two stinker albums in a row to rekindle my fandom, it was “Never Let Me Down” by David Bowie. For every good idea there were a dozen bad ones to simultaneously remind you that you were a fool to think he could pull his artistic fat out of the fire as well as why you may have ever liked his work to begin with! This is definitely that kind of shattering artistic failure. One that, frankly, put a headstone on my Ultravox fandom. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice; shame on me. As with Midge Ure’s solo career, I have reached the point of no return and will no longer be buying any new recordings of Ultravox. There’s only so much abuse these ears [and mind] can take.
Speaking of ear abuse, it is my displeasure to report that the brickwall mastering on this CD is the very worst I have ever heard. It has snatched the dreaded Tin Ears Cup from Duran Duran for their “Red Carpet Massacre” album. Click on that wave image to wonder in awe at the max volume of -0.1 dB. There is almost no dynamic range at all here. This album sounds absolutely ghastly. The drums in particular sound painful to hear; like firecrackers exploding and the cymbal crashes are unbelievably harsh to the ear. Headphone listening to "Brilliant" was like a form of torture. It adds a level of injury to insult in the playing of this disc. Ultimately, one is saddled with an album by a band you used to like filled with poor songwriting [for the most part], even worse singing, a life-sapping production that’s over reliant on gimmicks in the face of no ideas or anything to say, and ultimately given just the sort of mastering that, frankly, it deserves. But we deserved better.
