Review:

on 2011-05-21 CharlesMartel Said:

Another of the outfits which emerged from the untimely wreckage of the Chameleons was The Sun and the Moon. This album is, in effect, a compilation of their first album issue and their first EP. From the point of view of completeness of this short lived band's output, that is a good thing. Saved me hunting down more than one torrent for, in spite of a release date of 1999, this dates from the end of the eighties and is long deleted.

The album is the result of the collaboration between ex-Chameleons Mark Burgess and John Lever. They joined with two guitarists from the strangely named Music for Aborigines and produced a sole album and an EP from the late-eighties, shortly after the demise of the Chameleons. The result is an album almost as recognisable as a Chameleons album as one which is not. On a casual listen you would be hard put to find some gaps between the Sun and the Moon and their more illustrious predecessor, possibly the greatest of all post-punk outfits from the UK during their early and mid eighties.

In fact, as soon as you put this CD on it is instantly recognisable as being Son of Chameleons. The same double headed rhythm guitar, the same jangly chords, the same powerful drumming and of course the same melancholy, almost plaintiff vocals. To be honest this is pretty much indistinguishable from the Chameleons. And that is both a good and a bad thing. Good if you like the Chameleons, as I do. Bad if you are looking for something original. Originality is not the strength of this band, but then I suspect that originality was not high on their list of objectives when they recorded these tracks at the end of the eighties.

The strengths lie in the lyrics. As was so often the case with the Chameleons, there was a political, but not a specific political edge to what they wrote. The late 1980's were a depressing time for the English - Thatcher was coming to the end of her reign of terror over the British society and economy. It is instantly recognisable as the work of Burgess, who wrote most of the lyrics for the Chameleons. The break up of the band and the passage of time had certainly not taken the edge of his creativity.

Of the tracks themselves, the standouts are easily "The Dolphin" and "House on Fire". These are the more memorable and instantaneously likeable of the tracks. Yet some of the others grow on you, in particular "The Price of Grain", the lyrics to which actually seem to relate to the title (amazingly), although it is a not-so-subtle reference to the way ordinary people had been priced out of so much which constituted a decent life in the UK at the time and I would say used grain as a euphemism for housing.

Ultimately, however, the album is something of a disappointment. Don't get me wrong, it is still better than a lot of bands will ever achieve. The problem is I was deploying exacting standards for ranking this and it did not meet them. Still, if you are a fan of the British post punk scene of the eighties, this really is an album which you cannot afford to miss as it outlines how the genre petered out in the face of the shoegazers who deployed the twin rhythm guitars to different effect.
Rating: 6/10