Title: “Future Past”
Year: 2021
Premise
01) Invisible
02) All of You
03) Give It All Up (feat Tove Lo)
04) Anniversary
05) Future Past
06) Velvet Newton
07) Beautiful Lies
08) Tonight United
09) Wing
10) Nothing Less
11) Laughing Boy
12) Hammerhead (feat Ivorian Doll)
13) Invocation
14) More Joy! (feat CHAI)
15) Falling (feat Mike Garson)
Observations
Conclusions
Premise
The following review doesn’t absolutely claim to examine the tracks from start to end, in each one of their layers or finest detail, but only to describe my own personal discovery of them and to underline elements which, at the first few listening sessions, seem to me noteworthy, for one reason or the other.
I refer to the deluxe version of the record, which includes three additional tracks in respect to the regular edition: just like in All You Need is Now, and differently from Paper Gods, the additional tracks aren’t simply appended after the others, but they rather are inserted in the overal flow of the experience of fruition, according to a well precise communicative intention.
The record title, “Future Past”, constitutes and provides, in itself, a listening guideline: on one hand we get warned that what we are now listening, a fresh, brand new and shining production, will be regarded, by them, in the future, already gone, to consign to history so to look ahead to something different; on the other hand, we can easily acknowledge how history and actuality (musically speaking) of DD coexist in this work.
Who deeply knows history and branching of pop and new wave will certainly detect, in this or that sound, in this or that arrangement, precise references: even though my musicological gaps don’t allow me to do so with precision (alas), I will occasionally examine even the emotional and suggestive impression of the tracks, trying to decipher the underlying creative and communicative intentions.
By the way, one could reply to me that I could have investigated long ago to discover those references, and that’s certainly true, but I like the idea, however, that this review sees me react from what I currently know.
And, on the other hand, every enjoyer of music follows their own very personal path, from time to time influenced by suggestions and magnetizations more or less impromptu: in my case, for example, it’s about a path, by now decades-long, more oriented towards jazz, prog, metal and classical.
Anyway, there’s always time to explore, learn and enrich one’s own musical knowledge.
01) Invisible
1.1 Music
The record opens up with a distorted, gritty guitar.
The synths which follow and overlap onto each other, thus anticipating the layering of sounds which will define the whole record, immediately recall the past of the band, especially the first album, with their deliciously, suggestively vintage flavour.
A whispering female voice is another one of those characteristics which we will meet more times during this journey: an hommage or reference to the ASMR phenomenon which, a whisper after another one, wants to access, by plunging underneath the hubbub of the world which stuns our senses, the core of Soul?
But, here, the drums (triggerd, I believe, that is to say reproduced with synthetic sounds) remind us that not just of past, they live, Duranduran (I love to write it like this, like in the times Big Thing), and there, unavoidably, righteously, even the most artificial sounds from Paper Gods find a place all for themselves in this new (master)piece of our DD.
Then the verse begins.
Another fundamental element of DD’s sound steps in to keep us company: it’s John Taylor’s bass, dry, percussive, soon slapped, as much round as effective.
And finally, the voice of Simon John Charles Le Bon, which characterizes the band’s sound with no less weight.
And they certainly serve, such two elements, because on the first iteration of the verse the synths throw precise lashes of sonorous colour, there where, otherwise, between the the syncopated notes of battery and bass, between one word and the other, there would be the most extraordinary and frightening silence… as if music was building, each note like a wooden board or a rope, a daring, majestic, very delicate bridge suspended above the abysmal depths of the universe…
The chorus, like it often happens, with them, is evoking, in continous ascent (in the inspiration, despite the harmonic progression is rather descending) in the search of an harmonic resolution which, righteously, must not find its destination, but rather has to sow in our heart that pathos, that desire to look further on.
Lyrics are intertwined with a synth which imitates, somehow, the calls of a siren, perhaps coming from a lighthouse, lost in the thickest fog: not for nothing the lyrics convey the point of view of a person who fears to have become invisible… and, there you go, his chant is a desperate request to be perceived.
Already in AYNIN the first track, as the single introducing the album, is an intense, strong song, with sounds tending towards modernity, not necessarily aligned with what happens in the rest of the record: but it’s already since Red Carpet Massacre that the first track is also that in which we get a taste of the bass slap for which John Taylor has gained a place (and continued a tradition) in history.
I like the idea of anticipating that the whole album is pervaded very tasty bass liness, not at all reduced to a minimum.
The last word, “invisible”, sung when music has already given way to silence, perfectly succeeds at conveying the idea of a terrible solitude from which nobody can possibly escape (“‘coz we all become invisible”).
1.2 Lyrics
Simon Le Bon isn’t only a precious singer (in this record his voice is marvellously powerful) but also a superfine lyricist.
Therefore Words have a very special role, from his point of view… well, not just from his, of course.
“The Word is powerful”, says Joshua, the protagonist of “World enough, and time” by James Khan: adept of the religion of scribes, in a post-apocaliptic time, crowded with nightmares, to which we arrived by writing in depth, scientifically, there where we shouldn’t have, and in which the word is believed, consequently, to be magical.
In the book of Genesis we read that God invites Adam to give a name to each other living creature.
And, after all, isn’t our name, that which identifies us?
Thus, in Invisible, the first chorus charts a parallel between the visibility of each one of us and the capacity… or better, the will, of others, to pronounce our name.
It’s this, before anything else, which makes us feel seen, acknowledged in our dignity.
I remember “Say the word”, a song by Arcadia. And, alas!, didn’t the insane wickedness of Nazis refuse to acknowledge the humanity of the victims of the genocide exactly by replacing name and last name with a numer, just like a thing in a warehouse is identified by means of an article code?
Logically, second chorus swaps orator and auditor: I pronounce my own name, I affirm my own existence, but are they, the other, willing to listen to and acknowledge it?
I infuse my essence in my own words, but are they listened to?
Third chorus, as I said above, exposes to us the imagery of a solitude, of a collective invisibility which comes from lack of communication.
02) All of You
2.1 Music
The opening bass riff, played solo, is a little, big wonder, as effective as it is in letting us hear, in all of its clarity, the bass style of JT which generously drew from funky and disco of the 70s: so we don’t just find intelligible notes, but also many, clever and more than needed “ghost notes”, percussive sounds obtained on the bass by stopping the strings with the left hand while the right hand hits them, which contribute in rendering the bass line even more rhytmic and integrated with what the drums will do.
The following synth, which carries the verse, cold, dry, brings us back to the 80s, while the guitar indulges in just a few entrées, fast and scathing: a discrete presence, that of the guitar, which adds without invading too much a sonorous territory which, with the exception of the Cuccurullo era, has never been ruled by this instrument.
Thunderous toms introduce us to every new section: they do the same before the chorus, which, even though poignant, ends up leaning on the same chord of the verse, even though in minor more.
A chorus which sounds absolutely, magnificently “duranian” (“duranesque”?), and even ends with a short guitar solo, with the instrument quite processed, in a way which reminds both the taylorian style and that of Cuccurullo, and, at the same time, none of them, given it doesn’t seek neither outburst nor virtuosity.
Yet another important element in the chorus is given by the piano, which underlines the changes of tone with chords that sound full and substantial… solemn!
In the second chorus, choirs step in, on a riveting rhythmic section, disco-reminding.
And after an instrumental section which, dutifully, lets us enjoy the chemistry between the instruments (a heavily processed funky guitar reminds of stuff by Daft Punk), a portion almost suspeneded in time benefits from female voices, speaking and vocalising, and from an ethereal synth, almost ectoplasmic, which flutters from ear to ear…
Another female voice (the singer Barli) lets herself go in the countermelody on the final chorus, with noteworthy taste!
2.2 Lyrics
This one seems being, from the lyrics of the first two iterations of verse and chorus, a song from the point of view of someone letting themselves be governed by their own uncertainties about the romance they’re living, uncertainties which in turn get transmitted to the lover, which get mirrored in a crave for total commingling, for the loss of any barrier and distinctiveness.
But in the second verse two consecutive lines stand out: “So much more to this song’s meaning I don’t have time to say / Hit the high note of my feeling, can’t let this fade away”.
Thus there is at least a second level of interpretation: and it is used a jargon which is referred to singing, “hit the high note”.
Lather on, after the spoken intermezzo, we also read “in that we are music lovers”.
The mysterious lover who gives start to the chain of doubts could be the artist, asking to each fan whether they will stay, whether they will keep following… or, at least, this is what the biggest fan loves to think: that the artist asks, almost personally, to not be abandoned.
So we have what sounds like a total obsession, wanting to know and possess everything of the artist, plust imagining an affinity, an exclusivity of that bond which may cut the other fans out and turns the artist into one’s own property, to keep all for oneself.
03) Give It All Up (feat Tove Lo)
3.1 Music
3… 2… 1… 0… ignition!
A stereophonic sound, wide, very probably obtained with a vintage lo-fi synthetizer, is the carpet, soon extint, to another wake of white noise transfigured by flanger, as to suggest the launch of a rocket, or of a spaceship (or perhaps just of a plane, maybe supersonic?), towards far and marvellous places, is an unmistakable signature: that of caressing our ears is a duty that will be taken care of by master Nick Rhodes, now even mission (or flight) commander.
It is, once again, a jump in present (and future?), this magnificent piece.
For yes, bassdrum and then snare are evidently “discotequesque” (post 2000), with that “unz unz unz”… but the hi-hat played with triplets, open only now and then, is so splendidly “rogertaylorian”, but also “rhodesian”, for how it’s effected with flanger, that this “little”, significant finesse redeems the yield of the strictly rhythmic part.
Further synthetic percussions play an almost-tribal rhytmn, to suggest an exotic intention which is confirmed by a languid arpeggio, in minor groups of three or four, poignantly altered and enriched, which, again, will get the backbone in the choruses to come.
The melodious voice of Tove Lo, hushed and sensual, introduces us to an element, a melodic vocalism (“Yeah, I give it all up… for you”), which will find again, even only in the melody, throughout the track.
It enters, then, a carpet of more full-bodied sounds, which accompanies Simon, whose voice sounds so expressive, in a marvellous vocal line, before he unleashesi t all in the chorus, roared at the top of his lungs.
It makes quite an impression, to hear the bass play, with a rhythm which well suits the “exoticizing” percussions, almost nothing more than the fundamental of each chord… within the sense of the song, “I give it all up”, it feels and sounds like a thematically coherent choice.
Second verse sees Tove Lo taking the main voice role (which she fully deserves), while Simon comes back to join her for the second chorus.
How could I not praise as well some glided and speckled calls of the distorted guitar: bitter laughter of seagulls, that’s my impression.
During the new chorus new ascending arpeggios of strings peep for the first time… they will come back, even more present.
A suspended section, evidently conceived to let people go wild on the dance floor (and, perhaps, even to concede a further pause to Simon’s voice in the gigs), still sees the guest “soloize” with energy: at this point it’s due to mention even the addition of an intricated texture by the arpeggiator, as sparkling as sun specks dancing on the waves of the sea, which in its structure and intentions reminisces that, analogous, renowned, of the song “Rio”.
The coda, when the “drums” stay silent, is a sort of… “photograph in motion”, extemporaneous, impressionist (a style in which Nick Rhodes is master), given by the overlapping and sequence of synths half-way between melodic and noisy which suggest the image of the rocket bringing us far, far away, more and more…
3.2 Lyrics
An amorous relationship reaches its end.
It got lost, that feeling that at the beginning used to look so vivid, to the point one doesn’t even recall how it used to feel like.
At such a point, giving everything up, including the hope to be able to fix things, is a last act of love towards the other.
I like, in the verses, especially the first, the astronomical descriptions, poetical and suggestive, of that precipitation from the solid safety of the lost love, of that sidereal distance of the lovers they aren’t anymore, compared with that between the stars.
04) Anniversary
4.1 Music
Yet we land back on earth, right away, with a very short carillon of electronic bells, undoubtedly celebratory, with the obstinate bass drum united to a hammer-like noise (to suggest the continuous chiselling and adjustment work which forty years and more of career require, I suppose), the hi-hat now open and now close in an articulated riff, and the bass as much obstinate as it is modulated in octaves.
The synt line, which preceeds the voice and definitely sounds modern (once again, in disco sense), reminds a bit, modulated, the “ta-na-na-na” with which “The Reflex” begins, only to flow elsewhere.
And Simon invites us to to join them in the celebrations: how could one refuse?!
Later on, the chorus is enthralling, and comprehensive of all the elements which characterize a typical up-tempo song “à la Duranduran”: unleashed hi-hat, bassdrum and snare with the latter one which rolls at the end of each iteration, the bass a little disco and a little funky with generous usage of slap and octaves, Simon’s voice being powerful and joyous, and a “dodo-do-dododo” which reminisces (without copying it) that from “Hungry Like The Wolf”: if the disco-esque beginning can perhaps make us turn our noses up, the chorus makes us condone it.
A middle section, seasoned with both ancient-flavoured (in a duranian sense) and new synths, makes us taste a hint of vocal line, filtered and distorted, on which the track will later end, in a kind of processing which has entered long ago in their lexicon (as early as in the rousing coda of “All She Wants Is”, for istance).
4.2 Lyrics
As said above, this is, in all evidence, a self-referential song, celebrative of the fortieth year of career of DD (if we count from the year they published their first album).
I’m intrigued, at first, by the following two verses:
“Some moments burned into the storm / And some you’ll never know”.
We may think we know, from the interviews, many vicissitudes and difficulties ours went through, but truth is that we know only what they have chosen to share with us (as it should be).
And, again, my imagination is tickled by these words:
“Celebrate with silver, oak and bone /
Celebrate with paper, gold and stone”
On one side there’s eye for assonance and prosody. On the other… there’s so much more!
The passage from silver to gold could represent a parallelism with the designations of nuptial anniversaries: the golden wedding anniversary is even more important than the silver one, for twice the time has passed.
In the first verse there’s a reference to oak wood and bone: both organic materials, they refer to life, to growth and to the nurturing and care needed to favour the first two.
In second verse, instead, we find paper and stone: for sure it is not a reference to the famous game “paper, rock, scissors”, but it rather seems related to their story, which will remain written in the pages of the great History, and carved in the stone of that Time which has passed, and therefore is immutable.
They sound very human, and induce both a smile, and a few reflections, the words, like “I don’t know, I don’t know / Oh, are we still holding on? / And I know, can’t stop, can’t stop”.
It is what, at times, they wonder and say, in all evidence, themselves, while looking back, in all of their humanity.
05) Future Past
5.1 Music
The title-track had to be, ideally, worthy to represent the whole record: for construction, themes, sound…
It doesn’t absolutely disappoint, in my opinion, and it represents, as the first of three ballads (if you allow me to use such term), one of the most beautiful songs of the album.
It begins with a synth somehow between subtly percussive and melodic, processed, reverberated, in such an expressive style, which, I think, I never heard them use before, or at least noy like this.
Simon starts singing of distant memories, and the mood becomes melancholic… I’m not exactly sure why, but it reminds me, even though the style is different, of a sort of “musical translation” into the style of the 80s of an hypothetical song which could have been written decades before, with the crooning voice being the undisputed protagonist.
The guitar timidly arpeggiates.
And then the bass, coloured with chorus (like in many songs from “Rio”)… and when the songs blossoms in the refrain, with the drums taking the lead, with a sequencer underlining a hidden rhythmicity, I feel a vague reminiscence of “Take my breath away” by Berlin: not that the two songs are similar, no, absolutely. Yet there’s an interaction between the instruments, and there are cadences, which remind me, vaguely, that kind of atmosphere. It’s a chorus solemn and splendid, in the best duranian tradition… and arcadian, too, perhaps, yes.
The repetition of verse and chorus is more animated, rhythmically bolder… more pushing and compelling.
An intermezzo with a guitar solo reminds me a bit, for the way the instrument sounds and for the syncopated rhythm, as if it was waiting, the end of the solo of “Cracks in the pavement” from “Seven and the Ragged Tiger”: I’m not saying that the two songs sounds the same, but rather, only, that there are certain solutions and arrangements somewhat similar.
Towards the end, even when the drums stay silent, the chorus is repeated again, enriched with strings (Simon and an orchestra, what a marvellous combo!)… and finally Simon gets doubled or tripled, harmonized in such a way that, despite the single parts are very human, the outcome sounds curiously synthetic, almoost as if it was an electronic effect: “and we are living now”, he sings, after all, and such words are well represented by that effect.
5.2 Lyrics
A suggestive reflection on time passing by, on how every istant is a future that will already be past as soon as we will have lived it.
The first verse is even more poignant and touching as it is localized in space and circumstances: it is a true memory, not just a literary device.
Second verse is almost bitter: one chooses to be grateful for what still remains (yet, evolution, doesn’t it exist, perhaps, exactly in changes?), while observing the way life doesn’t go as we would wish.
But it is in the two bridges that the bitterness gets more stabbing: not only memories reach us, but they permeate us up to the point of making us think that we are not and we have not anything but them. Yet in both the circumstances there’s a consolatory escape in the idea of being closer and stronger, in sharing such a fate.
06) Velvet Newton
A space travel, around and through the rings of Saturn or through the clouds of Jupiter.
It is what it’s evoked in my imagination by this overlaying of synths, dynamic, lo-fi, now noisy, now resonating with feedback, now explosive, now choral, often rhytmic, and of a fretless bass dense and wild, always processed with chorus and perhaps some saturation, above an ostinato of bass drum: is, perhaps, the spaceship, a flying dance-floor with a view on cosmos? I wouldn’t be surprised.
Here Simon sings something (I can’t distinguish), before the texture gets more and more thick, in an apotheosis which ends into the sudden departure of the spaceship.
07) Beautiful Lies
***A descending slide towards the deep of John’s bass kicks off an up-tempo cavalcade supported, other than by the electric bass, by a sequence of synth, in the same deep register, whose rhtyhm and gait (that only) reminds the dragging synth in “Sound of Thunder” from their first album: the combo of suche two sonorities is simply stupendous, for the way the electric bass interlayers generous amounts of humnanity in the unstoppable gallop, cold, of the other instrument.
The harmonic progression of this first section is mysterious, inquisitive… in all evidence, given the title, in the search of truth!
On the verses the sequences of the first low synth pass to well higher registers, while another one appears, self-filtered in a very modern way, playing in unison with John’s bass, less invasive, more distanced, to leave more room for Simon’s singing.
A bridge with an exotic flavour (one can most see, in a torrid desert, a caravan, with camels as mounts strutting on dunes whipped by very hot winds) begins to sing about beautiful lies, and then becomes epic, ascending, triumphal, in accompanying that deep crave to believe them… but it shortly lasts, and that’s how, after a clever harmonic solution with a sequence of chords which at first leaves puzzled, yet makes very much sense for what the song conveys, we get back to the portion of “search for the truth”.
It may seem strange that the song doesn’t longer dwell on the concept of “beautiful lies” with a chord transmitting a sense of arrival, of fulfillment, and that the harmonic progression of the chorus doesn’t seem to reach anywhere, but that it rather looks for, intentionally, an effecto of instability: well, isn’t that exactly what lies, no matter how shiny, deliver, in reality?
The repetition of another verse is animated by a percussion, whose rhythms reminds of certain “clapping” effects, “ta-ta, ta”, from around the 50s or 60s, but whose sound, percussive and crumbling, like the reality whose solidity crumbles down as much as the beautiful lies get dismantled, could perfectly come from “Paper Gods”.
“As the drums announce we are trapped inside a snare”? Here Roger shows up at toms, in a style which is reminiscent of certain things from “Seven and the Ragged Tiger” or “So Red the Rose”.
Yet, well, the track goes on playing on that feeling of uncertainty, to the point that the last sectionappears pressing and beautiful, yes, yet suspended, unresolved: again, this from a thematic point of view, absolutely makes sense and is coherent.
And that last note of bass synth which, for last, abruptly turns off, isn’t that questioning?
08) Tonight United
8.1 Music
There often is, in our way to love, or to detest, the capability to filter, to weigh, one or maybe more elements, traits, characters, of the object of our observation, in favour or to the detriment of one or perhaps more other and further elements, in such a way that what arises before our senses, or our thought, will result amiable and desirable despite one, ten, hundred or even thousand flaws which we rather choose not to weigh (or not too much, at least), or again it will result unbearable to us, despite those qualities that we still perceive, but that don’t feel enough, to us, to make us change our drastic judgement.
To me the same happens about this song, whose beginnign is so baltantly conceived to attract people on the dance floor, in a discoteque of these times, that I find it not that much digestible.
Yes, my dear DD, I know, you want – since ever – make people dance, as well… but do you need to call them to the dance floor like this?!
That siren is a bit gross, ordinary, in my humble opinion… a bit unworthy, for a sonorous tradition, the duranian one, albeit capacble of so much depth, solemnity and beauty.
I’m not saying that it isn’t likable and captivating, in a discotequesque context: I just maintain that it is a bit banal, although… a little (actually, a lot) already heard.
And the variable passing-band filter on the octaves-based bass riff? Already heard, very much, since decades, by now, on the dance floors.
So, this is my personal “first impression” (quote) om the beginning of this song: has then succeeded, the rest, to make me forget it and to bring me to fall in love anyway of this piece?
A carpet of keyboards, bass drum and open/closed hi-hat (we find it often, actually, but it absolutely doesn’t tire), a bass which gets humanized by the dancing fingers of our very JT and the heartfelt voice of SLB succeed at giving me a bigger personality which makes me well hopè, if nothing else.
But it is on the bridge, on that sequencer once again à la “Sound of Thunder” (with the first three chords of four of the sequence which faithfully imitate it) that I’m able to find beauty in this song and to forgeta about that siren a bit cliché.
And in the chorus, that “naaaaaa na-na-na na-na-na na-na-na” further distracts me and catches me, despite the siren, even though iti s now sweeter, almost fluted, and vaguely reminds me, for the way it sounds, even though it differs from it, that from “Save a Prayer”, restarts playing.
The femal choirs, as well, which harmonize the principal singing, enrich everything with much taste.
Short intermezzos of slapped bass, solitary to let us fully enjoy their intrinsic percussiveness, are another element to list amongst the positive ones.
A suspended section offers a lascivious harmnonization of voices which makes me smile, every time.
And patience, if another keyboard sound worthy of a rave adds further clamour in the following repetitions of the chorus.
It takes to mention a “sharpening” of the sounds of the snare drum… almost as if there now was even overlapped, or replaced, the real sound, not triggered like previously in the song (I think): the energizing effect is noteworthy.
So, in the end, do I love it, this track?
Let’s say I do, at least enough, if nothing else for those qualities which succeed in making me (a little) forget about its flaws…
8.2 Lyrics
The lyrics mostly consist in a repetition of the simple chorus.
Yet in the verses there is one more reason to like this song.
Who, if not the youngsters, can “build bridges and demolish walls”, after having observed “the outmode of the old order”, along a “a song road to cross all borders”?
So here it comes the precious advice from who has done that, in music, by uniting punk, funk, pop, electronica and by reinventing themselves every time.
“If you wanna make a difference
If you wanna see a future coming round
Got to see it from a distance [ossia, devi saperlo immaginare]
Got to do it walking barefoot on the ground [ossia, devi metterci l’anima, percependo l’energia dell’universo, lasciandoti andare]”
09) Wing
It begins with a clean guitar phrase (well “solemnized” by the reverb), ending in a major chord: this must not deceive us, although, given that the tone is suggestive, yes, yet melancholic.
And there it happens, in facts, that the same chord, transmuted into the minor mode, becomes the beginning of the harmonic progression of the first sequence of verse and bridge, with the bass punctuating the beginning of each chord and only a little more, and some meager percussions, like subtle veins of a texture corroborated by brushstrokes of synth.
At the second iteration the drumkit enters, with a gritty mid-tempo in the best tradition of ours: its interaction with the bass, in the rhythmic section, is that, classic, which has been blessing our ears for decades.
A momento of stop in the rhythmic part provides, as much simply as effectively, some suspension: how will it continue, the piece?
For the second time, the chord which closes the previous section, changed from major to minor, serves to begin the current section: the chorus!
Very effective, poignant, cantabile (and sung magnificently, with drama and power, in such a way reminiscing things from “So Red The Rose”), it finds its resolution in the major version of the chord with with it had begun: it does so, sensibly, righteously, there where lyrics tell us about the tenacity of the narrating (singing) voice who doesn’t surrender, who hopes to become a better man.
Yet that chord, after a brief suspension, becomes minor again, to the anguished reality of things.
Of the chorus I’m also impressed by… a sort of wings, so to speak, of chords of the synth, very substantial, once again obtained with an arpeggiator (I think), perhaps processed with phaser and flanger, which represent, in my interpretation, a flight of elevation, from despair to hope: the sonorous outcome, and the emotional one, is extraordinary.
In a sustained intermezzo, which reprises the initial guitar arpeggio, there is a brief floating guitar solo, nervous, which reminisces the expressive ways of Cuccurullo.
Then once again verse, pause e chorus, are rigtheously enriched with further sonorities (including that of an orchestral strings section).
The solo on the new intermezzo, which gets repeated, is now responsibility of the keyboard, with sliding chords, as much powerful as languid, as to recall better times: on another iteration of the harmonic progression of the verse the voice isn’t there, replaced by a simple keyboard line and by a guitar solo even more piercing, rich with feedback harmonics, while on the bridge it’s once again the keyboard, with a sound similar to a flute united to that of strings, which continues the solo, simple but not banal, filled with feelings.
Further repetitions of the chorus end the song, for the last time in a suspension of the rhythm and with the final landing onto that major chord hinting at us that no, one doesn’t want to lose the hope to recover that relationship which seems almost lost…
(Personally , I consider this one a ballad, even though it isn’t certainly slow or “laid down” in its pace.)
10) Nothing Less
10.1 Music
With Simon’s voice in such a state of grace, we get, righteously, plenty of chances to listen to it either in solitude or with a minimal background, before it gets pleasantly overwhelmed by the ensemble of layers of instruments and sounds.
He is accompanied by a crepuscular synth and by a beat of bass drum which reminds a heart: after every beat there’s a sort of slapback(very short delay), obtained with a very short “torn” effect, which later in the song will be replaced by other pieces of the drumkit.
In fact, at the first occurrence of the chorus we find out that that beat in inserted into a syncopated rhythm, “laid down”, so to speak… I think it’s a well defined rhythm, whose precise identity, although, at the moment in which I’m writing, isn’t clear to me: perhaps, from the band Japan?
I love the chords “with portatamento” at the guitar, with a far-east flavour, while I’m not that crazy about that interleaved female sung phrase, perhaps too much repeated (which reminds me, intention-wise, the female counter-chant in “Come undone”).
The sonorous atmosphere in the second verse reminds me a little that from “A matter of feeling”.
After the second chorus we stumble on a guitar solo, as much powerful as essential: on one side, it infuses in the listener a theatrical sense of drama, on the other… perhaps, it’s a little too “roared”, especially in the low notes, in respect to the general tone of the song.
In fact, many guitar guitar phrasinsgs, almost gilmouresque, interacting with and along further repetitions of di verse, bridge e chorus, up to the end of the songs, feel more moderate and adequate to the piece.
Anyway, this is a ballad (the third one in the album, according to my very own method to define and enumerate them) which immediately enters your head.
10.2 Lyrics
How many different ways, suggestive, poetical, now taken from the most simple and banal everyday experiences, now dug from more onirical contexts, to signify the nothing a relationship can give.
The verses “romance on the phone” and “drawned in monochrome” seem suggesting it’s about a story mainly (or totally) lived on a phone, in an absence of presence, of real involvement… if the phone isn’t, in first place, actually, a way to distract oneself from that love and to look out of oneself, in that small luminous monolith, so not to look within oneself, to those feelings which aren’t there.
Yet, “nothing gained ain’t lost at all”, and this little warranty seems enough for the narrating voice for doing nothing, for saying nothing, and leave that things stay the way they are, with a tomorrow which offers “nothing less and nothing more”.
11) Laughing Boy
11.1 Music
The keyboards in the beginning, reminding me of wonders from “Big Thing”, introduce a dynamic background for Simon’s chant.
At the entrance of the rhythm section, given by the drums, more synthetic than ever, and by the slapped bass, we are contemplating a little wonder, a suspended melange between new wave and modern sounds.
But after this very held-back moment, here it comes a more dynamic and spirited section, and way less artificial, which leads to the chorus, sung joyfully, seasoned with harmonized choirs of Simon himself, and speckled with a marvellous synth, acute, evanescent, reminiscent of the wondrous 80s.
A guitar solo as simple as effective is then variegated with quick sequences of the arpeggiator, which will remainieven in the next chorus.
But we restart with verse and chorus, simply dragging (and Roger adds generosous quantities of thunderous toms, to run across our sonorous panorama).
Present only in the deluxe edition, it’s an extraordinary song, from a band which doesn’t sound at all as if it had behind fourty years of career (as it actually is), but rather as if, at the beginnings of its path, it yearned to show the world its crave for expression and its ambition.
11.2 Lyrics
Once again it begins with memories, from a reflection on the time gone by.
“Time ain’t gonna wait
For even you, my friend
I can’t stay late
I’m looking at the end”
Although, we find some cryptic references to gambling: an high ace, and the fact that after years one is still waiting for the jackpot of a lottery which will never come.
Now he doesn’t run away, given he ran all day (that is, all his life?), but now everything is crumbling down, now it’s coming… again, the end?
He says, “I have been your laughing boy / I took it on the chin / Accepted gracefully / And all the heat that you deploy / Your laughing boy / The more I take, your laughing boy / The more I break”.
In the next verse, more memories, a campfire on the beach, and the person to whom the xchant is addressed is by one’s side: but now “The palace gang’s back to old / things, that’s my cue / I’m gettin’ out in style”…
It almost feels like a contraposition, between an old relationship in which one cannot dwell, otherwise it would cost being hurt, and what (who) one wants to be or do: a relationship with someone who never took seriously who’s singing those verses, and what he does with that “palace gang”.
Could it be an autobiographic piece, about someone Simon knows, concerning the difficulty of that person to seriosuly consider the artistic choice to whom our singer has been dedicating a lifetime?
12) Hammerhead (feat Ivorian Doll)
It’s just an example amongst infinite others, but I’d like to praise the sound of the four chords with which this song begins: toasted, friable (!!)… gluttonous, with that hint of phaser (or, at least, I can hear it there), that master Rhodes has added to the recipe.
This is the care, the attention, the mania about details with which ours creates the sounds which can make the songs special, unique, different from anything else you hear around (in at least an interview he confirms it, himself: he doesn’t use pre-existent presets, or at least not simply “out of the box”, without customizing them).
This toasted biscuit has, in this first phase, the function, other than that of introducing the song, to accompany Simon in a first exposition of the verse, together with a stealthy, sinuous synth, of 80esque remembrance, soon followed by an execution of the chorus: during this one the bass joins in, massively and stupendously processed, together with a tasty voice announcing “I’m coming for you” and, oh wonder!, even a choir with an exciting gospel intention!
Even this time the advent of the drums, as much essential as effective, together with the bass, provides the song with a sly and appealing drive (which reminds a bit “Skin Trade”).
I like to underline, from the background, streaking the sonorous texture, the repetition of a twittering or squeak processed with flanger (perhaps played on the guitar), folowed by the repeated sound of a videogame-like laser… an elment linking, both aurally and thematically, to one of the followin tracks (the next one, in the non-deluxe edition).
Everything excells, and the short rap (four iterations) performed by the guest on duty, the british Ivorian Doll (with such an adorable accent!), certainly adds a welcome element of novelty: why just a rap? The feminine figure coming is strong, unstoppable, therefore an “amelodic singing”, also in a style traditionally associated to male world, is an optimal vessel for such sense of power.
From the lyrics, in the followin verse, I like to quote this:
“In the name of all the women I’ve known
The woman inside of me is out to take me down.”
I think it’s very jungian, for it matches the idea that in the man there is the Anima, declined in the feminine, with which a male should meet and with which he should adhere, somehow, to find in himself balance, harmony and completeness!
In other words, the woman within him manifests herself to demolish that too macho side of him.
On the end, another whispering, more and more present, by Ivorian Doll, while the music, in contrast, fades out: “I’m coming… I’m coming… I’m coming for you”.
“For”, I underline: in fact, meeting his hidden feminine side, abandoning the excess of his macho side, by facing his own feelings, will only benefit him and make him more balanced.
An excellent and suggestive ending, in my opinion.
13) Invocation
That very same ending riff from “Hammerhead”, given by guitars, bass and synth, now re-surfaces from silence and gets modulated on a poignant descending harmonic progression, while the drumkit, first limited to the sole bass drum, drags it along a path, a march, sustained by all the pieces, in a resulting ensemble which could last hours without making us tired (…and, honestly, it should, last hours).
Simon seems improvising a chant of a few words, always pertaining the mysterious woman who, from within the soul of the chantor, takes possession of him to transmute him into a being with a heart complete… and then the chant becomes a powerful vocalization, pushing itself towards high notes, rivalling with the lyrical cries of the guitar… and then the rhythm gets lost, and crumbles down (yet, the underlying, persistent arpeggio of synth reveals that there’s still a sense, a structure, in the deep, to support even that moment of dropping the self on the surface), to give the impression that the track is an extemporary invention born by itself, like a sonorous miracle, during the rehearsals, and that it was providentially recorded and preserved to consign it to our astonishment in all of its as much imperfect as perfect beauty.
A real pearl, perhaps the song, from this album, which has touched me the most while discovering it.
14) More Joy! (feat CHAI)
A perky intro, mainly consisting of the sustained battery “à la Taylor” (read, wild on the hi-hat) and of a sequenced arpeggio whose sonority reminds me of the advancement of a character, all pixelled, in a vintage videogame (well, there’s also a basic synth bass line), introduces us without delay to the situation which permeates the track: it must be a party, because CHAI, the guests on duty, amiably chat one with each other.
And they don’t stop (not completely, at least) even when Simon proposes the verse for the first time (the topic of the conversation must really be interesting!).
But, the magic happens on the repetition, of that verse: because the chorus-processed bass (although on the background, to punctuate, there’s also another one slapping) exposes an octave-based line quite intense and… very familiar!
Yes, for if you focus on its sole rhythm, while changing the fundamental notes of the chords, yet kleeping the cadence and the usage of the octaves… this is where you find again the intense, magistral riff of synthetic bass at the base of “All She Wants Is”!
You recall the words of the chorus: “all she wants is… all she wants is… all she wants is… more!”.
Ah, sure: and for thirty and two years, we’ve been wondering, “more” of what? What does want, she, more, again and again?
There we go, after thirty and two years we discover it, finally: “All She Wants Is… More Joy!”.
How could one disagree?!
During the chorus CHAI members join in to confirm it, with the yell “more joy!” like in a call and response with Simon.
But the party has in store another surprise, for us: the instrumental backing track and the joyful chatting of the female voices, in fact, get overlayed by a solo of atonal effects which remind me the idea of a positronic (?!) motor, accelerating, of a mecha (read: giant robot), ready to emerge from the sea offshore Tokyo and to fly, thundering, on the city…
No, neither to destroy it, nor to defend it from Godzilla, but rather simply to join the party and perhaps even to hazard a few thundering dance moves (kindly, may CHAI shift themselves, for pity’s sake! (DD too, for pity’s sake, of course!))!
It actually sounds like a successful party: while the music fades out, we can hear the robot leaving, while our nice talkers keep, undaunted, to tell each others… yeah, what?
A long tv series, perhaps?
15) Falling (feat Mike Garson)
15.1 Music
An acoustic piano with classical intentions: a magnificent and solemn theme (it will becmoe the chorus), which to my ears who (also) love symphonic sounds seems yelling “please, add an orchestra!!!”.
Now, no, the orchestra doesn’t come: but a few, feble bells, here and there, join in…
The acoustic piano and an electric one (sounding à la “Edge of America”) begin, watchful, to play what is the skeleton of the verse: in the meanwhile, a synth “à la first album”, ethereal and processed, floats around our ears, while a guitar with a quick slapback and a sprinkle of reverb, à la “Palomino”, and therefore from “Big Thing”, sketches a few, precious notes.
And Simon’s chant begins, with the piano which, in the pauses, interacts with him.
The elegiac chorus comes back and that’s when we find out that the chant builds upon it pinnacles apparently reaching the sky: it may sound paradoxical, given the title “Falling”, but the lyrics will soon reveal their sense.
It’s the reprise of the verse, to which now are added bass and drums, with a pace which is dragging despite being subdued: and the momory, powerful, goes back to the synthetic jazz of “Too Late Marlene”, still from “Big Thing”.
Now the piano, still evocatively classic, starts to let itself fall into some jazz phrarsing… “blue”, like that certain melancholic feeling… and in fact hte lyrics have already disveiled that it’s about “falling into feeling”.
The sonorities, although, don’t just evoke the past: the sound which covers the role of the snare is that percussive sound, similar to a plastic piece fixed on a support which, once hit, vibrates, that in “Paper Gods” could be heard in “In my dreams”.
I like to underline how Simon’s voice is, in the beginning, quite dry, after all, not excessively dressed with reverb: likely to convey a sense of closeness, of intimacy.
But soon this changes, after a brief interlocutor section with a “do do do”: here you hear is reverberated voice, while all the instruments underneath him go wild to add generous and emotional flourishes.
Once again the chorus, flowing into a suspended moment, heralding the reprise of the subtle interjection of which the “do do do do” was and is the set tone inspiring and launching everything.
The piano is unleashed, audacious, in phrasings now jazz, now classical, and it is marvellous to find out the way a synth pop song can unite, by mixing them, both the influences.
Simon no less lets himself go, with wavering vocalizations, as in a melodic conversation with himself.
On the ending the piano and the floating synth remain, while what sound like electronic whisperings leave us breathless, sighing for the end of yet another masterpiece by our loved Duranduran.
15.2 Lyrics
“On a white beach under the sun”: one cannot help but being reminded the music video of “Save a Prayer”, with that kind of scenery.
It gets marvellously described, the moment when one wonders whether they’re onthe point of falling in love, “With a quiet explosion within / Like a raindrop falling on skin”: for the senses, too, get quoted, like ensigns preceeding the royal feeling.
But there’s a doubt, almost a concern in admitting that what one feels is love, and that’s when either one denies it or wonders whether it actually exists, or even demands oneself the permission to acknowlesdge it and call it like that.
Now, if we remember the lyrics of “Save a prayer”, an elegy to one-night stands without deep words and without a further, deeper involvement, with “Falling” it seems to see a subsiding, a surrender: now matter how much one is ashamed by it, no matter how much one fears it, for it involves putting oneself out there and showing oneself in one’s own frailty, maybe one can finally let themselves admit, even only in a question, that one can let themselves go into falling in love, to feelings, by falling into them with the body and, most of all, with the mind, which admits it, and with the soul, which accepts with good grace to project its stare towards a future, unknown, beyond one’s own certainties, a future whose decrees cannot be other than not known: it is faith, perhaps, in a broad sense, the one being secretly questioned in these verses, like a quiet prayer which, when one lets themselves fall, could whisper “if you love me, then, now that for you I let myself fall into the unknown, catch me, grab me… save me”.
Observations
– The ASMR (“Autonomous sensory meridian response”) is a state of relaxation and psycho-physical wellness. The term has then been used to name the trend, very popular, of those audio recordings consisting of whispers and sounds recorded with a stereo microphone which may return, with great fidelity, closeness and spaciousness.
Here and there in the album there isn’t lack of whispers in ASMR style: a reference to the phenomenon, undoubtedly, maybe with a not even that much hidden intention to transmit a further sense of well-being to the listener: already just the beauty of the music would achieve (and it actually does) this, of course, but it could even be that the whispers transmit the intention to get, almost subliminally, to the soul of who’s listening. Another possibility, not necessarily mutually exclusive in respect to the others, is that they wish to approach, at least with the voice, the listener with discretion: in an age in which a pandemic can be contrasted by keeping social distancing, that’s very suggestive…
– From the lyrics of Simon Le Bon the most various attitudes and colours have, since the beginning, surfaced: now careless and party-goer, now deep and melancholic, often and willingly mysterious and cryptic.
It’s certainly impressive, and touching, now, in the words of the mature Simon plenty of reflections on the time gone: one can almost figure him, stopping and looking back… by all means, that’s absolutely natural, but if we think that our loved frontman has reached his 60s, one can’t help feeling something kind of crushing the heart…
– The guitar appears in all the songs, often buried underneath the layers of synths and bass, sometimes surfacing with much personality, yet never central in the tracks, mostly according to the duranian balance of the first albums.
Yet, in an interview for Rolling Stone (October 2021), DD state how the role of the guest guitarist Graham Coxon has been nothing less than decisive, during the composition: proof of this is also the number of songs in which Coxon has co-writing credits.
Conclusions
AYNIN was the past: it is impossible, to me, sentimentally, but even rationally, to add a “too much”, for how splendid it is! The merit has certainly to be ascribed to the producer, Mark Ronson, who persuades them to revisit those sonorities from which they’ve distanced themselves for decades for not to repeat themselves: a fate not too different from that of MetallicA, who after the masterpiece called “…And Justice for All” spent decades to denature and reinvent their sound.
Then Paper Gods projected itself in the future, in many moments even too much, perhaps (this “too much”, instead, I’m not loath to say it: it’s just my very personal opinion, of course).
Future Past, instead, is the perfect synthesis: DD throw branches towards the sky of future starting from solid roots well deepened in the ground of their history, and that’s how the two aspects end up coexisting in sinergic, balanced harmony, thus painting a splendid present.
It also takes to underline that FP also has the merit to draw its own lymph from the sonorities and modes of a greater number of albums by ours, when insted AYNIN was focusing more on the first three ones.
We should certainly thank, as well, the producer on duty (for the majority of the tracks), Erol Alkan, for having providentially persuaded them to not be ashamed of their own most genuine and natural sonorities, but rather to embrace them once again, even through with the modern sensitivity, so to sound more Duranduran than ever.
(DB, 2021-11-16)
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