Paul Morley - The Poptimist Trilogy (live reviews February 1982)

In February 1982, Paul Morley reviewed live concerts by three groups across three weeks - Haircut 100, Altered Images, Depeche Mode. Groups generally deemed among the flimsiest of the New Pop offerings of the time. The review trilogy was aimed as a series of goads goring the sober-sides of aging Clash fans and grey overcoats still mourning Joy Division.  It's a tour de force of provocative - and genuinely thought-provoking - transvaluation, celebrating surface pleasures, frivolity, disposability,  while gleefully rubbishing ideas of substance, seriousness and durability. Note the appearance of the word "post-rock" in these reviews, meaning something quite different from what it would in the '90s.

It's interesting to think what became of these three groups and how unexpected some of their trajectories would prove to be from how they appeared in '82.  Thoughts about that below, after the Morley reviews... 

HAIRCUT 100

Kilburn

New Musical Express, February 6 1982

by Paul Morley

 

ALTERED IMAGES

Hammersmith Palais

New Musical Express, February 13, 1982

by Paul Morley

DEPECHE MODE

Hammersmith Odeon, London

New Musical Express, February 20 1982

by Paul Morley

FAST FORWARD TO THE FUTURE!

To conclude my important three part examination of the wonderfully unbrutal and irrationally enchanting post-rock teenEEbop ideologies... BOYS AND GIRLS, the living resonance, the no mere ornament, the fresh air, the dashed flair, the motiveless action, the living plasticity of Depeche Mode Boys say go! A rejection of all forms of elitism! So sure of their salvation! An eclectic imagination that celebrates the untrammelled future! The fine delight!

Seen from one direction, Depeche Mode's 'innocence' and 'innocuousness' must seem a particularly irritating and sterile little thing: a tiny thing, an almost invisible, unnatural thing. Those very ill people only ever look at things from one direction and so as usual they miss out on all the special side-effects and glorious incidentals that make new pop groups like Depeche Mode so joyous and luminous and EXTREMELY INCONGRUOUS. I have learnt to look at groups like Depeche Mode from at least 100 directions: but then, I'm not ill, and I will not let Depeche Mode get me down...

I see that they are helping break down conventionalised responses to the world, re-working and revitalising with a soulful, sighing skill the impulsive, frivolous qualities of the traditional pop song, reflecting sarcastically on their own role and image of themselves, overcoming spectacularly the dismaying rockOH dogma, learning to love ironically the technology that gives them their means and gets them earning. When I look at Depeche Mode I see strange shapes, angelic precision, diamond brilliance, infinite possibilities, in actual fact I see a very NATURAL THING... sort of — and I wouldn't want this all the time, of course — an art without suffering, spiritually healthy, unceremonious, not mournful and yet confidingly friendly, an art which exists in terms of it's utmost familiarity with mankind. I don't say that Depeche Mode are making heroic efforts to extend human application: but their playful nonchalance — very Dada, don't you think — and their exaltation of love as the supreme manifestation of the pleasure principle is one hell of a smack into the eyes and teeth of the mediocrity of the universe.

As you can see, I will not let Depeche Mode get me down. I leave that to The Resigned, who bow to a very strangled kind of necessity. Superficially tidy, the surface hides much that is authentically doubtful and unpredictable — just below the surface of Depeche Mode are very valid and uplifting energies. Depeche Mode — as with all post-rock teenybop groups — are empty ONLY TO EYES WHICH DO NOT KNOW HOW TO DISCERN THE HIDDEN PATTERNS i.e. those very ill people, who someHOW remain dead earnest amidst the gleaming, audacious, defiant, redemptive power of groups like Depeche Mode I say this: Depeche Mode and their particular MIRACLE OF SIMPLICITY is enough on its own to fill me with some kind of enfolding radiance — let that be known!

Anyone who could sulk all the way through Depeche Mode's kissing, tingling, IMMEDIATE show at Hammersmith Odeon must be very ill indeed: and of course their sulks don't make a damned difference, to the life inside Depeche Mode, to the new waves of energy Depeche Mode are contributing to. There is no absence of wit when Depeche Mode are on stage. "Life," they imply, "is neither good or bad: it is original " Based in this premise, their songs are preoccupied with unpredictability, surprise and discovery and underpinned with an almost comic jauntiness. The songs have young bodies and an intense vivacity. Depeche Mode have refined as well as anyone the pop choreography of transience. For the moment: only a moment. The reds, greens, blues, pinks, yellows go flashing by: the fleeting moment, the kaleidoscopic light of changing environment and circumstance, the kaleidoscopic speed of changing perception... Depeche Mode songs are thoroughly on the brink of 'a' — rather than the — next moment. So absolute: so arbitrary.

Depeche Mode left the air mild, but spinning with colour and sensation. They wrecked the cliché that an electronic group can only be bland and wistful on stage, or that a synthesiser group empties life of spiritual content, through the sheer suggestive consistency of their transmission and the energetic business of their presentation. They did Gerry and the Pacemaker's 'I Like It' as a third encore and everything fell into place.

They are the boys who want tomorrow, with the best will in the world.

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So what become of these transient thrills of '82, New Pop's annus mirabilis? 

Depeche Mode had the most surprising shift of direction, the most unexpectedly long-lasting career. All their dinkiness seemed to depart with Vince Clarke (into The Assembly and Erasure, shudder). Depeche quickly became a Serious Band, inheritors of the Clash and Gang of Four, railing against Thatcher and money-minded values and almost methodically ticking off the boxes of Big Issues  to Tackle (they did racism and other-hatred, religion). They deconstructed the Love Song and critiqued Love as a distraction, in the very Gang-of-Four-y "Love, In Itself". They flirted with transgression: the Swans-gone-synth of "Master and Servant", the God-renouncing "Blasphemous Rumours". As the lyrics grew ever more serious, the music grew ever more sophisticated. Live, they became a kick-ass band, rocking huge crowds at American stadiums like the Pasadena Rose Bowl (capacity 70 thousand). Then, in the early '90s, Depeche veered in an outright rocky, blues-grinding direction around the time of grunge; Gahan became a junkie in the most cliched rock'n'roll LA way. Depeche turned out to be one of the most influential bands of their time - big everywhere but especially huge in importance in Central and Eastern Europe.  

Haircut 100 had the briefest career. Yet in some ways, right from the start, they were the most rockist of the bunch. They could really play, and some of the band had clearly been listening to things like Average White Band and Steely Dan, even if the template for Pelican West is pretty much Talking Heads '77.  In NME, Danny Baker - champion of Chic and Earth Wind & Fire, scornful sceptic about whiteboy discofunksters like A Certain Ratio and Gang of Four - gave Pelican West a rave review - said these boys really had their chops down. Nick Heyward went solo while the residue released a second H100 album, Paint and Paint, which disappeared without a trace. Heyward later on winded up recording for Creation Records of all places - the most rockist, or more precisely, rock'n'rollist of labels.  

Altered Images did a second album in their bouncy fizz-pop mode and then went for a drastic make-over with the sexed-up, glammed-up, all-grown-up Bite and its singles "Don't Talk To Me About Love" and "Bring Me Closer". Then it all fizzled out, and to be honest I'm not really sure what happened to Clare and the boys after that. But of these three groups, it's their songs - "Happy Birthday", "I Could Be Happy", "See Those Eyes" - that I'd be saddest to never hear again.  

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Morley comes back for a second bite of the live cherry with this review of a bizarre lineup that combines Bauhaus and Clare's crew. 

The Bauhaus is also a second go-round (sort of kind of part of the Poptimist Trilogy, or an extension to it, were the belittling live reviews of Peter Murphy's lips and Kirk Brandon's ears). 

Morley savagely retracts - bitterly retracts - biliously retracts - his previous esteem for the pop genius of Nick Heyward upon the arrival of the lad's solo debut in October 1983, North of A Miracle fair suppurating with soft-rockism