Review:

on 2011-02-20 CharlesMartel Said:

During my stay in Hong Kong, a period which coincided with my bachelor heyday and with the apex of eighties music and style, I came as close as I ever did (or ever wanted to for that matter) to a musical relationship with the mainstream. This was partly because it was incredibly difficult to get to hear good contemporary music coming out of the UK or the States, and partly because, well, if you were out on the pull, having a musical appreciation for the Chameleons and a disdain for Billy Ocean was not going to get you very far. Thankfully, there were occasional groups which were able to satisfy both strands of musical necessity. One such group was Alphaville.

Quite often mid-eighties Europop was terrible - who can forget the band Modern Talking, for instance. Forget, shit, I wish I could!!!!! Just imagine the worst excesses of the new romantics mixed in with some soulless electronica dribbled over a snappy four-four beat to make it danceable and utterly inane lyrics which shame even the most banal of disco lyricists. Anyone who has ever been compelled to try and chat someone up over the strains of "Cherie Cherie Lady" will know exactly what I mean. The resulting musical sound was all too often a monotonous melange of rather robotic sounds created by wan, stick-thin, young men with bad haircuts and moustaches which seemed to come straight from the catalogue of Teutonic porn films of the late seventies. Perhaps the latter was no coincidence - indulging in your own personal porn was what you were after anyway.

For some reason, and I think Rudi Voller has a lot to do with it, German Europop players all seemed to look the same. Permed mullets and viva zapata moustaches - they all looked like cheesy out-takes from a low budget porn movie. When Europop hit the eighties, it seemed like a gift for inept hairdressers the world over. Here was a golden opportunity to make someone look like he had just been pulled out of a hydraulic industrial vacuum cleaner and still being able to sell records to the commercial market. German Europop also had a reputation for being very techie and sometimes too damn clinical and sterile in terms of its millimetre perfect production, and that did not help either.

No one could accuse Alphaville of any of this. Although this was classic Europop in many ways, it was a step back from the pop pulp of the majority. This was an almost incredible album when it came out and it is still, in my humble opinion, the pick of the mid 80's Europop. It retains the elements of danceability, but with some interesting musical structures, a vocalist whose style of delivery is unique to himself, and songs which actually convey atmosphere and meaning instead of banal comments about hair or arse-wiggling.

Despite the potential negativity, it is well worth listening to this because it proves that Modern Talking were symptomatic of something much worse in German popular music - the Eurovision effect. Alphaville proved that bad hair and pathetic music was not a pre-requisite for mid eighties techno-pop.
Rating: 7/10