Category: Prefab Sprout

Steve McQueen- Prefab Sprout (1985)

There were some singers or bands whose collective bodies of works were analysed in a forensic fashion before a particular album was put forward for consideration in this rundown.  Prefab Sprout weren’t one of them.

I do have a fair bit of time for a number of their other LPs, but Steve McQueen really stands many heads and sets of shoulders above the others.   It’s responsible for a piece of history in the ICA series in that Side A is identical to Side A of ICA #51, which I pulled together back in November 2015.  With your permission, here’s a cut’n’paste of what I said back then.

“The early 80s was a great time to be a follower of new music in the north-east of England. Indeed with bands such as Hurrah, The Kane Gang, Prefab Sprout and Martin Stephenson & The Daintees all on the Newcastle-based Kitchenware Records, there was a scene that wasn’t that far removed from Glasgow and Postcard Records of just a few years previous.

It was Prefab Sprout who turned out to be the most commercially successful of the acts, thanks in the main to the songwriting and tunesmith talents of Paddy McAloon, but also to the marketing men who pushed hard until the elusive breakthrough hit emerged.

The band came to prominence in 1982 with a couple of singles that were hits on the indie-chart, as well as a 1984 LP Swoon (short for ‘Songs Written Out Of Necessity’) that was well received by the critics.

By now, although the records were still coming out on the Kitchenware label, Prefab Sprout had the might of CBS Records behind them, and the band was pushed into the studio with a big-name producer for an album that was intended to be released in 1985.

There were many who predicted a disaster. McAloon was a fairly shy, laid-back individual who was seemingly being put under immense pressure to deliver something that justified the large contract signed with the major label. There was also the fact that despite Prefab Sprout being a band known for melodic, acoustic-based songs, the producer was the electronic pioneer and chart-act Thomas Dolby, and no-one could imagine any chemistry between the two.

Against all the odds, a masterpiece emerged.

The first hint we all got was the release of a single – When Love Breaks Down – which kept all the majesty and magnificence of a McAloon tune but had some beautiful bits added courtesy of keyboards that were clearly the work of Dolby. Despite this, the radio stations didn’t really pick up on it, and the single failed to trouble the charts.

The album came out soon after. It had the strange title of Steve McQueen.

I thought at the time it was bloody marvellous. And I still do and I will argue long into the night and right through the next day after the sun has come up that Side 1 is perfect; the CBS record bosses obviously thought so too, choosing to release four of the six songs as singles.

Except for the opening and closing tracks, it is not an album to get up and dance to. Instead, it is one to wake up with on a Saturday or Sunday morning if you’ve had a memorable time the night before and take great joy in life itself.”

mp3:  Prefab Sprout – Moving The River

Opening track of Side B of the album and not included on that old ICA.  Paddy McAloon surely is, a truly gifted kid.

JC

Album: Steve McQueen – Prefab Sprout
Review: Uncut – 20 April 2007
Author: Andrew Mueller

The original 1985 release of this, Prefab Sprout’s second album, confirmed what the previous year’s debut, “Swoon”, had hinted: that the firmament had been graced by a star of singular twinkle.

More than two decades on, the material wrought by Paddy McAloon for “Steve McQueen” still has the feel of a masterclass delivered by some amiably eccentric, terrifyingly brilliant Professor of Song. He would go on to wreak further, if infuriatingly intermittent, miracles – “Jordan: The Comeback” and “Andromeda Heights” – but “Steve McQueen” remains as rich and complete a single songbook as has ever been authored.

Though often self-consciously arch, occasionally verging on too-clever-by-half, McAloon never allowed his intelligence to dominate his passions: for all the playful wittiness poured into the music and lyrics, “Steve McQueen” remains a piercingly sincere evocation of heartbreak. The best songs here – and the quality really varies only between a million miles better than average and certifiable thundering genius – are as eloquent as anything by Leonard Cohen, as angry as Elvis Costello at his most spiteful, and accompanied by the melodic grace of Brian Wilson.

“Appetite”, “Goodbye Lucille” and especially “Bonny” are supremely pretty songs, freighting some pretty ugly truths. The career-spanning characterisations of McAloon as some flouncing, floppy-fringed Fotherington-Thomas were only ever the work of people who weren’t listening.

The rawness of the emotions underpinning Thomas Dolby’s deceptively polished production is emphasised on the acoustic recordings of eight of the tracks, which appear as a bonus disc. McAloon’s new versions of “Faron Young” and “When Love Breaks Down”, addressing the romantic folly of his youth with the weary wisdom of his middle-aged voice, are especially baleful and glorious in their desperation and desolation. That key line of “Goodbye Lucille” – “Life’s not complete/Till your heart’s missed a beat” – now sounds much more like a promise than a threat.

JC adds…….

The review is spot on in that this re-release, with the additional acoustic versions, somehow managed to improve something that I’d long considered perfect.  Just over five years ago, I pulled together an ICA for Prefab Sprout, and, for the first and only time, I had one side of said ICA as identical to one side of a studio album – Side A of Steve McQueen.

So, it makes sense to start off 2021 with something just a bit different in this series; it’s a special treat for those of you who don’t know them – all eight tracks from the bonus disc of 2007.

mp3: Prefab Sprout – Appetite
mp3: Prefab Sprout – Bonny
mp3: Prefab Sprout – Desire As
mp3: Prefab Sprout – When Love Breaks Down
mp3: Prefab Sprout – Goodbye Lucille #1
mp3: Prefab Sprout – Moving The River
mp3: Prefab Sprout – Faron Young
mp3: Prefab Sprout – When The Angels

 

 

 

Limoges – an historic and picturesque city of around 140,000 residents, located in west/central France. Not a place that I was ever familiar with until the early 80s by which time I was in my 20s. In fact, if quizzed, I’d have struggled to identify it as being in France. Things might have been different in the city had been home to a decent football side, plying their trade against the likes of St Etienne, Bordeaux, Strasbourg , Souchaux and Nantes, places that I would never have been able to pick out on any map but which I could tell you were located in France thanks to the exploits of their teams in the one or other of the three competitions played out each season by European club sides.

It all changed when Paddy McAloon came into my life.

One of the biggest legacies of Postcard Records was that it demonstrated it was very possible, in the UK, to build up a scene and a record label around the music being played in a particular locality. The north-east of England, and in particular the area around Newcastle, was particularly blessed with talent in the early 80s and it was no surprise that two locally based club promoters – Keith Armstrong and Paul Ludford – decided to start up Kitchenware Records to which they then signed a number of popular, locally based acts. One of these was Prefab Sprout, a band who were fronted by a superb wordsmith and musician who drew immediate comparisons to Roddy Frame.

The band’s first single for the label was in 1983 and it was one which, the previous year, they had self-released on Candle Records, copies of which are ridiculously rare and therefore very valuable. It was the strangely named Lions In My Own Garden (Exit Someone), a gentle mid-paced ballad built around acoustic guitars, soft drumming and a harmonica. It feels like and it sounds like a love song, but one in which love seems to have been lost and yet the protagonist remains hopeful. The lyric is remorseful but far from desperate. Indeed it is a song which carries an air of optimism and hope. But what, exactly was it about?

Limoges was the answer. Or to be more precise, the fact that Paddy McAloon was missing his girlfriend as she had left Newcastle and moved to west-central France.

Lions
In
My
Own
Garden
Exit
Someone

Utter genius. And a helluva love song for Valentine’s Day.

mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Lions In My Own Garden (Exit Someone)

Kitchenware, in collaboration with Rough Trade, had two stabs at making this a hit single, trying again in 1984. It’s still beyond me that it was never picked up and given any sort of decent listing by BBC Radio 1 and was restricted to being played in the evenings. This should have been a huge hit.

It also came with a very listenable b-side.

mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Radio Love

It is a gem of a debut and there are times when, despite many subsequent superb releases, I often think Prefab Sprout never bettered it.

 

JC

In early 1988, it had been a long time since there had been any new Prefab Sprout material. Some two and a half years since the release of Steve McQueen with all sorts of rumours kicking around that the record label had rejected its follow-up as not being commercial enough (rumours that turned out to be true). All it had done was lead Paddy McAloon to go back and write a bunch of songs that would prove to be the most pop and radio friendly sounding of his entire career which in due course would provide the band with their only ever Top 10 single and their most succesful and biggest selling album.

The music press trailed the release of the new material by indicating that the lead-off single was a tribute to the life and work of Bruce Springsteen. This was a hard one to swallow….I didn’t have Paddy down as an admirer. Now don’t get me wrong, although I didn’t at the time (and still don’t) own any of The Boss’s records , it wasn’t down to any personal dislike or not rating his songs – he seemed (and still does) a very sound bloke and he was (and still is) very good at what he does – it’s just that the music he makes has never done anything for me.

It was therefore a bit of a relief that the song, once listened to closely, was actually spoofing much of what Broooooooce stood for:-

mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Cars and Girls

As I’ve written previously, I love Cars and Girls as much for the fact that having been subjected to that intense  pressure to come up with a catchy hit, Paddy delivered a blasting critique of the label’s biggest selling star without the bosses seemingly catching on.

It was as far removed from any of the songs on either of Swoon or Steve McQueen as could be imagined. It was almost AOR sounding and the sort of thing that wouldn’t have been out-of-place on the sort of compilations that you find in service stations the length and breadth of the UK. A perfect song to listen to as you accelerated your vehicle over the speed limit, preferably with the soft-top roof lowered as the wind whipped through your hair…with a lyric that took the piss out of such folk.

The single wasn’t a huge success, stalling at #44. But incredibly enough, Cars and Girls would become a staple part of those service station CDs over the next 20 years and as such helped boost Paddy’s bank balance by a fair bit.

Here’s the two excellent tracks that were on the b-side of the 12″

mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Nero the Zero
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Vendetta

Nero the Zero is a fine tribute to Paddy’s home area – akin to Raintown and its relationship with Glasgow – while Vendetta could easily be interpreted as sideways swipes at the folk at CBS for the rejection of the previous album.

JC

Some three months ago, I put together an ICA for Prefab Sprout. It was a bit of a cop-out in that I went for one side of Steve McQueen and then chose another six songs for the other side.

I spotted this morning that someone had left a detailed comment behind which in effect was his own stab at an ICA for the band. I thought it was too good to leave well hidden and so have lifted it out and turned it into a bonus post.

It’s from Gil Gillespie….and as far as I know this is the first ever comment he has ever left behind…..and it’s a big thank you for this…especially for reminding me again of just how great your opening track is:-

SIDE A

1. Green Issac (from Swoon)

Perfect opening announcement, building slowly to a typical Prefab Sprout crescendo. Contains the immaculate line: “But to shine like Joan of Arc, you must be prepared to burn.”

2. Appetite (from Steve McQueen)

What a beautiful song, such poise, such heartbreak, such elegance. Has anyone ever understood melody as subtlety as Paddy McAloon?

3. Bonny (from Steve McQueen)

If you have just split up from your girlfriend and you haven’t slept for 4 days and are in the back of a car going to Cambridge with Patrick Duff from Strangelove who hasn’t slept for about 3 months, this song will make both of you cry.

4. Enchanted (from Langley Park To Memphis)

I reckon this is the band’s most under-rated song. It is also, quite possibly, the happiest song ever recorded. It bounces along with self-assurance, McAloon tumbling lyrics over themselves as he refers to Romeo & Juliet’s warring factions as a crew. Why wasn’t it released as a single?

5. Looking For Atlantis (from Jordan: The Comeback)

I’ve just checked to see where this single got to in the charts when it was released in 1990. Number 51 on the UK Chart. Number 51? That is almost beyond belief. It is an irresistible song with production so lush it takes your breath away. Surely, CBS are at fault for the band’s shockingly poor chart history.

SIDE TWO

1. Cars and Girls (from From Langley Park to Memphis)

A glistening hub cap of a single, the Springsteen-bating ode to a more sophisticated mindset somehow only reached number 44 in the charts. It really should have sold millions.

2. Wild Horses (from Jordan: The Comeback)

For the pin drop perfection of Thomas Dolby’s production alone, this deserves its place.

3. Desire As (from Steve McQueen)

Heartbreaking, just heartbreaking. Someone on You Tube put it best: ‘Amazing how songs can perfectly express a moment in time, its memories, the exact colours and feelings. Thank you forever, Paddy McAloon. You´re genius.’

4. Real Life (Just Around The Corner) (from NME EP Drastic Plastic)

A strange but typically life-affirming oddity that hints at just how far into the left field they could go if they wanted to. Not too far away from Parisian sophisticates, Phoenix

5. The Golden Calf (from From Langley Park to Memphis)

This is their Crazy Horses, a driving, faux metal guitar anthem complete with McAloon almost doing a Metallica impression.

mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Green Isaac
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Appetite
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Bonny
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Enchanted
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Looking For Atlantis
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Cars and Girls
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Wild Horses
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Desire As
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Real Life (Just Around The Corner)
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – The Golden Calf

Enjoy

I’ve given this a fair bit of thought, but in the end come to the conclusion that Side A of my Prefab Sprout Imaginary Compilation album has to be identical to Side A of the band’s sophomore album released in June 1985.  In the UK and most other places the album was called Steve McQueen but in the USA it went by the name of Two Wheels Good thanks to a dispute with the estate of the late American Actor.

If pushed, I’d probably say that Side A of that album is my favourite half-record of all time. That may sound like a strange thing to say – and it’s not that the songs on the b-side don’t do anything for me – but I just feel that we were provided with six timeless works of art, sequenced in the perfect running order, and which are among the best bits of music that the band, and/or Paddy McAloon in his solo guise, ever released.

What this does of course is turn this particular Imaginary LP into a 12-track effort as its B-side has to offer a proper balance.  But what to go for? After all there are other songs on the flip side of Steve McQueen that are more than worthy; likewise just about everything on debut album Swoon 1983 and there’s quite a few tremendous songs on each of the four albums released between 1988 and 1997 – I haven’t bought any of the releases since then so can’t offer any observations about them, although just about everyone else I know who are fans of the band have raved about 2013 LP Crimson/Red, But for what it’s worth:

SIDE A

Faron Young, Bonny, Appetite, When Love Beaks Down, Goodbye Lucille #1, Hallelujah

The early 80s was a great time to be a follower of new music in the north-east of England. Indeed with bands such as Hurrah, The Kane Gang, Prefab Sprout and Martin Stephenson & The Daintees all on the Newcastle-based Kitchenware Records, there was a scene that wasn’t that far removed from Glasgow and Postcard Records of just a few years previous.

It was Prefab Sprout who turned out to the most commercially successful of the acts, thanks in the main to the songwriting and tunesmith talents of Paddy McAloon, but also to the marketing men who pushed hard until the elusive breakthrough hit emerged.

The band came to prominence in 1982 with a couple of singles that were hits on the indie-chart, as well as a 1984 LP Swoon (short for ‘Songs Written Out Of Necessity’) that was well received by the critics.

By now, although the records were still coming out on the Kitchenware label, Prefab Sprout had the might of CBS Records behind them, and the band was pushed into the studio with a big-name producer for an album that was intended to be released in 1985.

There were many who predicted a disaster. McAloon was a fairly shy laid-back individual who was seemingly being put under immense pressure to deliver something that justified the large contract signed with the major label. There was also the fact that despite Prefab Sprout being a band known for melodic, acoustic-based songs, the producer was the electronic pioneer and chart-act Thomas Dolby, and no-one could imagine any chemistry between the two.

Against all the odds, a masterpiece emerged.

The first hint we all got was the release of a single – When Love Breaks Down – which kept all the majesty and magnificence of a McAloon tune but had some beautiful bits added courtesy of keyboards that were clearly the work of Dolby. Despite this, the radio stations didn’t really pick up on it, and the single failed to trouble the charts.

The album came out soon after. It had the strange title of Steve McQueen.

I thought at the time it was bloody marvelous. And I still do and I will argue long into the night and right through the next day after the sun has come up that Side 1 is perfect; the CBS record bosses obviously thought so too, choosing to release four of the six songs as singles.

With the exception of the opening track, which is a tribute to a long-forgotten country & western singer and chugs along like an express train being driven by Casey Jones, it is not an album to get up and dance to. Instead, it is one to wake up with on a Saturday or Sunday morning if you’ve had a memorable time the night before and take great joy in life itself.

mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Faron Young
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Bonny
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Appetite
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – When Love Breaks Down
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Goodbye Lucille #1
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Hallelujah

SIDE B

Don’t Sing (from Swoon, 1984)

I have no idea why this very jaunty opening track on the debut album has the title of Don’t Sing as those two words don’t appear anywhere in the lyrics.  Instead it seems to follow some sort of bizarre and crazy Spaghetti Western script with outlaws and whisky priests getting into all sorts of trouble….but whatever is taking place on no account have they to put any blame on Mexico.  Wonderfully catchy and surreal with a fabulous harmonica solo thrown in for good measure

Cars and Girls (from From Langley Park to Memphis, 1988)

The second half of the 80s were strange times for Prefab Sprout.  There was near universal praise for Steve McQueen in 1985 but the intended follow-up for the next year was shelved, only appearing in 1989….by which time they had unexpectedly enjoyed a Top 10 hit thanks to a very catchy but ultimately annoying chorus about hot dogs, jumping frogs and Albuquerque – anyone who bought parent LP From Langley Park to Memphis in the hope of finding a few more like The King of Rock’n’Roll in there would have been in for a shock.   The nearest would have been the earlier lead-off single which had reached #44  – I love Cars and Girls as much for the fact that having been subjected to intense record label pressure to come up with a catchy hit, McAloon delivered a blasting critique of the label’s biggest selling star without the bosses seemingly catching on……

Lions In My Own Garden (Exit Someone) (single, 1983)

This had first come to prominence as a self-financed release on Candle Records in 1983. In an era of a number of very clever wordsmiths fronting gentle-sounding guitar bands, McAloon clinched the crown as the cleverest of them all thanks to a catchy sing-along number that seems to make no sense whatsoever until someone whispers in your ear that the first letter of each of the words in the title spell Limoges, the city in France where the writer’s girlfriend had moved to live, breaking his heart in the process. All over a tune that was as Postcard-era Aztec Camera as any fan could have wished.  The Peel Session is included here for novelty value as much as anything (and because it lets me use more brackets – and I like brackets!!)

We Let The Stars Go Free (from Jordan : The Comeback, 1990)

Prefab Sprout hadn’t toured in five years but took the decision to go out on the road in support of their 1990 opus which had more than enough songs to have been a double album.  It was a brave move that backfired somewhat as the songs on Jordan : The Comeback being rich in arrangement across a range of genres and relying heavily on the tricks of the studio didn’t fare all that well in the live setting, even at a venue as sympathetic as Glasgow Barrowlands. The experience put me off the album somewhat and I didn’t listen to for a long time after, but there’s no denying that this, which was also released as a single, is as dreamy and ethereal as pop music gets (apart from perhaps Desire As from Steve McQueen which almost made it on at this point)

Life Of Surprises (from Protest Songs, 1989)

This was the album originally recorded and intended for release in 1986.  It’s still not clear whether the band themselves abandoned the project – some of the songs have more of a demo than fully produced feel about them – or whether the label just felt it had no commercial viability and was likely to lose many fans along the way.  The fact that it took another two years for the next album to appear – which as mentioned had a ridiculously catchy and unrepresentative pop single on it – makes me lean towards the latter.  As it turns out, Protest Songs does have a number of well-merited moments, not least this song which would eventually be issued as a single in 1993 to promote the label issuing an inevitable ‘best of’ LP when it became clear that a new full studio album was a long way off.

Real Life (Just Around The Corner) (from NME EP Drastic Plastic, 1985)

Part of a four-track EP given away with the NME in September 1985. This was the only studio recording on the EP as the others were live tracks from The Style Council, Lloyd Cole & The Commotions and The Robert Cray Band.  For a very long time, I was under the impression that the NME EP had been the place where the song had first aired but the rise of Discogs, with its encyclopaedic approach to the various releases reveals that it was in fact on one of the 12″ versions of one of the three separate releases handed to When Love Breaks Down.  The fact that I have two versions of the single but not the one containing Real Life will hopefully be an acceptable explanation for my mistake.

Anyways, Real Life (with its introductory nod to The Battle Hymn of The Republic)  might not be all that much of a stand-out song in the Prefab Sprout canon, but it was one with which I had a habit for a long time of finishing off compilation tapes for all sorts of friends on the basis that I was signing off with what I thought was an impossibly difficult to find track.  I just feel that now I’m dreaming up an imaginary compilation album there can only be one candidate to close off Side B…..but it is one that I think is more than good enough to have you want to immediately go back and listen to Side A which, after all, has the pick of the tracks from that very golden era in the band’s history.

mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Don’t Sing
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Cars and Girls
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Lions In My Own Garden (Exit Someone) (Peel Session)
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – We Let The Stars Go Free
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Life Of Surprises
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Real Life (Just Around The Corner)

Enjoy