Cherry Red | UK | CD | 2014
Claudia Brücken: Where Else UK CD [2014]
- I Want You
- Nothing Good Is Ever Easy
- I Lay All Night
- Day Is Done
- Walk Right In
- Nevermind
- How Do I Know
- Moon Song
- Letting Go
- Time To Make Changes
- Sweet Sound Vision
It seems like only yesterday <cue harp run> that I was anticipating the new Claudia Brücken album, “The Lost Are Found.” That album got released in November of 2012, but I only scraped together the cash to buy it a few months later. So it’s still “fresh” on my racks at under 10 years of age! In these, the end times, I’m used to artists taking 5-8 years between releases these days [Simple Minds, I’m calling you out] as they struggle with the new musical economies. Every other album I want these days has been crowdsourced.
Not so, says Little Claudia, who has hinted that new material was being readied just a few months ago and viola! She’s signed with our friends at Cherry Red who should probably institute a subscription program, given the amount of material on my want list from them. The cover is already designed and it hits the streets on October 6th. The advance scuttlebutt says that this is the first album she’s made that is not reliant on computers or synthesizers, but what of “Another Language?” That seemed [I guess seemed is the operative word here] to be largely Andrew Poppy’s acoustic piano. But I digress. For this outing, after coaxing some of the finest work from the hands of Stephen Hague yet, she’s joined forces with John Williams [Blancmange, Housemartins] in the studio to make her next move. While the new economies often mandate self-production, I’m pleased that she gets to still make record the old fashioned way, by collaborating with other people. It broadens one’s horizons, and Ms. Brücken has yet to make a clunker.
All of these songs are new compositions, save for the Nick Drake cover [“Day Is Done”] and Claudia has learned to play the guitar that she’s toting on the cover expressly for the writing of these songs, so expect some new wrinkles in her dossier.
“It was actually exotic. The guitar could create special effects instead of the usual machines, which have become much more ordinary than they were when I first started.” – Claudia Brücken
She has a point with that quote. Even by the mid-80s when Propaganda turned my head severely with their stunning work, technopop was getting a bit long in tooth. If a band like Pet Shop Boys didn’t write such outstanding material, their sound might have passed me by completely by that time. Personally, it’s the juxtaposition of machines and older instruments that entrances my ear the most, so we await the results with keen interest.
The album will be available in CD and LP formats with no outlandish “collector variations” available to muddy the waters of purchase and enjoyment. A bit of that works for me, but it can get out of hand these days. Better still, one can buy the CD on pre-order as well as the LP on pre-order for less than a king’s ransom. Hopefully, there might be an actual single or two where B-sides may manifest. Keep watching the skies. Meanwhile, I just realized last night that I never got “Love: And A Million Other Things” on LP back in the 90s! It’s out there for a reasonable cost on the collector’s market so… memo to self.
– 30 –
Post-Punk Monk 
Sometimes I think, the more we discuss these truly worthy artists, the more Chaos Theory or the Butterfly Effect creates the possibility that we might get more music from them. Who would have predicted that in 2013 or 2014 that we would get new material from Visage, Prefab Sprout, China Crisis, Primitives, Kitchens Of Distinction, Ms. Brucken or even Deacon Blue? These are artists committed to releasing worthwhile music as well, not just some discography disrupting crap. These are heady days.
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Echorich – I especially value having timely music from Ms. Brücken following the fallow period of the 90s, where she was presumably raising her daughter.
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New material from China Crisis? And Primitives? Do tell, Mr Rich …
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Chas – China Crisis album is a PledgeMusic issue and should be out in Fall. I think we will see the same from Primitives as they are done recording, I believe and touring some of the new tracks.
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chasinvictoria – I’m not Rich [ain’t that the truth], but The Primitives have been reformed for five years now! They have released music since 2011, including a new album in 2012. I have only seen this once ever, in Wuxtry Athens but on LP only!
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The 2012 covers album by Tracey Tracey + Co was great! Last year’s single, Lose The Reason, rated top 5 in my songs of 2013 and bodes very well for the new album!!
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Echorich – Wha….?! A great covers album?! That means I’ll now have to start using the fingers of my second hand to count the good ones now!
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Monk – the tracks are so obscure that they easily become Primitives tracks…Panic, originally by Reparata And The Delrons, Turn Off The Moon originally sung by Sue Lyon – the lead actress from Kubrick’s Lolita, Laura Ulmer’s Amoureux D’Une Affiche, sung in French. Le Grand Mellon’s Move It On Over is a song begging to be played live! Tracey lets loose her inner Debbie Harry on it as well. Paul Court even sings Nico’s I’m Not Sayin’.
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I second this! Echoes And Rhymes is stellar 60’s garage-pop, as was the half original/half covers EP Never Kill A Secret. Honestly, Tracy and the boys have never sounded better.
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Taffy – “Pure” was absolutely one of my favorite albums of the late 80s. It’s to my everlasting regret that I missed seeing the band in Ratona Beach during their tour. I already had tickets for Erasure the same night. “Wild” tour. My favorite Erasure album. I said “fageddaboudit” and gave my ticket to a friend. Oh, we tried to see them, but we got lost, and gave up. I told the friend who wanted to see The Primitives with me that I’d buy him a ticket for Erasure so the night would not be a full loss. Insult to injury? The Orlando Arena would not sell us a ticket as the show had already begun by the time we had returned back to Orlando with our tails between our legs! Bitterrrrrrrr memories, yes.
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