Timely resprouting
Marcus Berkmann
No one quite believes it, but the new Guns N’ Roses album is finally coming out. Axl Rose has been working on it for 17 years, demonstrating, as rarely before, the fine line between perfectionism and padded cell. It is a reminder, though, that in these busy times quite a few acts have gone missing in action. The stories about Gerry Rafferty, who checked into a London hospital in August for tests on his liver, did a runner, and was spotted several weeks later buying whisky in Harrods, reminded those few of us who used to buy all his records that he hasn’t exactly been at his most productive recently. There was an album six or seven years ago, the first for a while, with horrible clattery arrangements and several pics of Gerry on the CD insert wearing a long coat and looking furious, like an Old Testament preacher before opening time. Since then, nothing. Presumably he’ll be missing in action for some time yet.
Other acts, though, drift so far out of your consciousness that you almost forget that you ever liked them in the first place. I was scanning the shelves the other day, wondering as ever what to play next, when I saw a small pile of Prefab Sprout CDs and I thought, I remember that. Over the years I have played Prefab Sprout’s seven albums so many times that I thought I’d never want to play them again. Paddy McAloon’s songwriting gift is wholly particular — lush, romantic, so quietly ironic you could easily miss the irony altogether (so ironic, sometimes, that you thought you might be supposed to miss the irony) — but the glistening, synthesised production techniques of the 1980s tied his tunes to that decade forever. Since 1990 there have been only two Sprout albums, which I played and played in the desperate hope that they might be as good as 1988’s From Langley Park To Memphis, but neither of them were. There seemed to have been a loss of songwriting confidence — certainly there was a loss of momentum — and in the late 1990s McAloon, who is now 51, started to suffer from a disorder of the retina that affected his vision. It seemed that his time had gone.
So there I was, standing at the shelves, and thinking not ‘Shall I play these again?’ but ‘Is it the charity shop for you?’ If the latter, you have to play them just once again, for old time’s sake, and to make sure you’re not making a terrible mistake. So, perhaps inevitably, I have spent the past two weeks happily rediscovering my Prefab Sprout albums, listening to them with new ears, enjoying them all over again. Swoon (1984) is the fearsomely clever marker, the c.v. saying ‘here’s what I can do’; Steve McQueen (1985) is the early classic, with great songs and a severe mid-80s haircut; From Langley Park To Memphis sounds expensive, well worked over, but fantastically confident, utterly accomplished; Protest Songs (1989) is a swiftly recorded overflow, so prolific was the McAloon muse at this stage; Jordan —The Comeback (1990) now seems slightly underpowered, with an overarching concept that doesn’t work and too many half-realised songs; Andromeda Heights (1997) sees rock’n’roll leave the building and the inner Sondheim firmly in control; and The Gunman And Other Stories (2001) was a little more modest, more pared back, possibly in the knowledge that people were not listening any more. It’s fascinating to hear McAloon striving for something that he only occasionally achieves. Even Steve McQueen is hampered by Thomas Dolby’s desperately dated production. Oddly enough Andromeda Heights now seems the boldest experiment, and to my ears has two or three of McAloon’s very best songs. (What would Sinatra have made of ‘Whoever You Are’?) But it wasn’t what critics or audiences wanted. The big question throughout was, what did Paddy McAloon want? He has hundreds of songs stockpiled, apparently, a piece of information that has long had Sprout fans itching with frustration.
And then, just as I was writing this piece, the new Mojo came through the letterbox and I read that Prefab Sprout have been recording again. A new album will be out in February, tentatively called Let’s Change The World With Music — The Blueprint. (Let’s change the title instead.) So Paddy McAloon is missing in action no longer, and I am walking around with a huge stupid grin on my face. Rafferty, it’s your turn next. ❑
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