1001 Albums Summary

Not exactly ground-breaking stuff, but certainly a veritably listenable album that encapsulates the early 80s optimistic futurism, before we realised it had all gone wrong. While I wasn't there at the time, I've often felt New Wave was a culturally strange genre, ill-fitting with the misery of Britain in the 80s. The aggressive counter-culture roots of punk had sublimated into the mainstream by the likes of Malcolm McLaren (boo hiss), and New Wave now seems to have been the final echo of an alternative future being subsumed into commercially accessible, hollow slop. As someone who identifies as a disappointed Gen Z punk, I associate New Wave with the emptiness and liminal eeriness of Mark Fisher's concept of Hauntology - "The slow cancellation of the future has been accompanied by a deflation of expectations." Fisher's analysis goes a long way in answering why there is no true descendent of the punks (and why I like the tunes on Rio but still find myself resenting it). My shortcomings for this album are not purely cultural though, I find the spacious reverb applied to most tracks on Rio even make it sound like the lonely individualist uncomfortability of Thatcher's Britain. Undeniably though, Rio has some heat when enjoyed mindlessly, and some especially good basslines that I can't resist jamming to.

In the unfortunate position of following up Rumours, Tusk doesn't offer anything to convince me I shouldn't just be listening to it's predecessor. After a monumental success it's impossible to recapture the magic, in no small part because you're given unlimited support and money. The record-breaking budget of Tusk is more an indictment than an endorsement. Much like George Lucas's Star Wars prequels, this album demonstrates what is lost when creative constraints don't exist. I don't know how to create good music, but I know to continue making it requires constant criticism of the old and reinvention of the new, and Tusk doesn't do either.

Opens with a few decent tracks, but quickly descends into a slog of tracks almost indistinguishable from each other. I'm certainly not the target audience for this kind of 80s sensuality, and so found the whole project a bit off putting. At least the theme of hedonism fits the masturbatory idea to stretch out Automatic to 9 and a half minutes long.