Sulk [Original recording remastered, Import]

This reissue is as wonderful as it could be- as with The Affectionate Punch (1980), later versions of this were altered/remodelled (White Car in Germany turned up & Nude Spoons was nixed). This version, overseen by Michael Dempsey (an Associate himself, as well as the original bassist in The Cure)is wonderfully remastered, presents the album in its original 10-track format (which is how it was designed- imagine messing with the order of Pet Sounds or Sgt Pepper!) and now with 7-bonus tracks from the era. In addition, there are full-length versions of songs like Club Country (not quite the 12" version, but longer than the original vinyl issue) & the Diana Ross-cover Love Hangover is longer than the version on the 18 Carat Love Affair/Love Hangover single or the take found on 1990's Popera-compilation...

The late Billy Mackenzie with partner Alan Rankine were the main creative core of Associates & composed the majority of the material here (Dempsey co-wrote Skipping with them). They advance on The Affectionate Punch and the era collected on Fourth Drawer Down (1981), which saw them hit alien-pop abandon with songs like Fearless and White Car in Germany (not to forget their hard to find cover of Kites- an obscurity that has sadly not turned up on any reissues thus far & the song that predicts the sound of Sulk).

Sulk sounds like nothing else, it's one of those perfect albums like The Marble Index, Star Sailor, Swordfishtrombones, Tilt, and Trout Mask Replica that sounds like nothing else on earth. The kind of album that makes people listen and go, "What is that?"- Sulk is a record I've played people reared on Bjork, Radiohead, & Suede & blown their minds with. The Bowie-Eno-Roxy-Sparks influences are here, but taken much further by Mackenzie/Rankine, Dempsey, drummer John Murphy, keyboardist/vocalist Martha Ladly and co-producer Mike Hedges- whose 'wall of sound' tops even The Banshees'Dreamhouse. This is an album that rivals Pet Sounds and Smile for ambition, arrangement, and production...

The first five-tracks are seen as the dark half, opening with instrumental Arrogance Gave Him Up (which like bonus-cut And Then I Read a Book was the kind of song they experimented with on the two-volume BBC sessions)- which with closing instrumental nothinginsomethingparticular gives the album a circular feel. Arrogance...is pristine-pop and eons more adventerous that New Order at the time- New Order at least in the UK being revered as the pioneers (sometimes the sole pioneers- which is an overstatement). The first song proper No opens with washes of thunder & then a semi-classical piano refrain and a potent, all consuming ambience that makes me think of Michael Nyman. Mackenzie's lyrics are both oblique & poetic,"Tore my hair out by the roots, planted them in someone's garden...Tearing facial masks in bed, what kind of sequel is this that you dread?." Arguably some of Mackenzie's lyrics can be seen to predict his tragic suicide- No's "Shaved and cut myself again, should have let it slip down further", or Partyfearstwo opening&closing lines, "I'll have a shower and then phone my brother up, within the hour I'll smash another cup." A deeper melancholy lies there...

Bapdelabap and Nude Spoons were both songs cut from later versions of Sulk, here they provide the angular side of the darker half & rival Magazine's The Correct Use of Soap. Bap De La Bap is strange sideways stuff, trance-like rhythms and more oblique lyrics, "Vasco de Gama only voyaged with intent to stare...A labrador sits on a bed with its tsetse tied." The key word regarding Sulk, both lyrically and musically, is ABANDON. A brilliant cover of Gloomy Sunday (a song associated with death, suicide, & tragedy) takes us into the dark and lays the ground for the manic-meltdown of Nude Spoons. This sees Rankine explore manic-guitar and a sound advancing on the hoover-inflections found in 81's Kitchen Person & has Mackenzie's potent vocals drift into mania declaring,"I'm glad this vital heart attack/It clears psoriasis...It lies there canistered for future reference...It lies there canistered with nude spoons euphoria." A key element of pop remains the ability for something to sound alien, but kind of make sense- I haven't got a clue what Nude Spoons is about: which is fantastic and shows Mackenzie was a fabulist who should have been filed between Don Van Vliet & David Lynch. I like not understanding...

The second half of Sulk lets the light back in, Skipping is a gorgeous song that balances funk with melancholy and looks beyond the bleak stuff, "doors lead to other doors, roads lead to other roads- they're simple, they just happen..." It's Better This Way (revisited with a lone guitar & vocal on bonus track The Room We Sat in Before)offers resigned drama, a Banshees/Magazine-sound and a vocal that sounds like Scott Walker colliding with Bjork colliding with...something heavenly!

Next up come the two UK hit singles Partyfearstwo and Club Country, both of which had legendary appearances on Top of the Pops, the former opens with Eno-like ambience before that sublime piano-refrain comes in. Billy's operatic vocals are mindblowing here, especially towards the end as they shift into backing vocals that sound spectral and Spectoral at the same time. Club Country is even better, a more alien-Haircut 100, with an opening sound that predicts the opening of New Order's Fine Time. Like Was(Not Was), Gang of Four circa I Love a Man in Uniform and early Heaven 17, Club Country is a major dance-track- hypnotic and mutant disco at its finest. It even has a moment that sees Billy kind of rap ("sad to see that you're suffering- work hard at being a something"). Rankine's rapid guitar has to be heard to be believed, a post-amphetamine/post-punk take on Nile Rodgers. Club Country is the climax and nothinginsomethingparticular is the end of credits...

nothing... returns in the bonus tracks, retitled as 18 Carat Love Affair and now a killer pop-song with hooks aplenty; its flipside Love Hangover is great fun, though personally I prefer the original! Tracks like Grecian 2000 and Ulcragyceptmol are more alien and experimental; the best bonus track remains Australia (which is actually track 16 and not 15) which is as great as any of Sulk-proper...

Simply put, Sulk is the number one album in heaven!