When I first heard the English band Prefab Sprout (on VH-1 of all places) in 1985, I was immediately sold on their soft fuzzy style of pop. I would spend the next few years (frustratingly pre-internet) trying to peace together information about the band and it’s back catalog. By 1988’s From Langley Park to Memphis, I had caught up with the band’s then three disc catalog of studio albums.
The band’s debut, the difficult to track down Swoon gave no clue to how the band’s lead singer and primary songwriter Paddy McAloon would evolve into the Thomas Dolby collaborator and maker of slick alternative pop. No dreamy Wendy Smith singing in the background here – or at least not as much.
Swoon might be the band’s least accessible album. It’s sound teeters somewhere between the quirky but dry jazz/funk of Steely Dan, China Crisis or Aztec Camera. It’s challenging structures are sometimes crammed with what sounds like multiple arrangements in one song. “Here on the Erie” and the amusing “I Never Play Basketball Now” are as much infused with catchy rhythms as they are they are overlapping lyrical references. All clever stuff from the mind of a young under employed genius.
McAloon in many ways was like Green Gartside during the earliest period of Scritti Politti. While Gartside mixed forms of post punk with academia, McAloon does something similar. There’s so much going on lyrically and musically, that you might easily miss some of it with cheap iPhone headphones.
This is exactly the kind of album that I tend to gravitate back to over the years. While Steve McQueen (Two Wheels Good in the States) or Jordan: The Comeback might be easier to enjoy right away, the sublime notes of Swoon can an acquired taste that gets better with time.
In sounding so unconventional for 1984, it has aged well over the years. The album’s rough edges are fitting with the musical legacy of Northern Soul with its subtle black American musical influences. “Crule Fanfare” for instance mixes these musical legacies to create a back-beat with some swing to it. It’s far from traditional R&B, but then again much of Swoon is far from most new wave and pop music released in 1984.
The mix of mid tempo and ballads at times hints to a future of Thomas Dolby produced polish that would come later. “Elegance” and “Cruel” prove that McAloon and Dolby were equals when it came to the vision of the band’s sound in subsequent albums.
If you are already a Prefab Sprout fan, you’ve likely heard Swoon. For new fans, Swoon offers a peak into the mind of a very young McAloon who was bursting with interesting musical ideals. He of course is still one of the great singer songwriters of his generation, even if many Americans are ignorant of his later work.
Beatopolis 