I love TV Smith's work,
from The Adverts to his later bands and solo stuff, and consider him one of the
finest songwriters of the last 40 years. This is the one album of his that I
find very hard to listen to. The most obvious problem here is the keyboards and
production that together give it a horribly dated 80's feel. Looking back
across 40 years, they become cringe-worthy. Given TV's abilities even that
wouldn't necessarily be an issue, but his song writing on this is perhaps the
weakest of his career. The chord progressions are predictable and uninteresting
and musically much of the material doesn't feel like it's going anywhere.
The other problem is the vocals. On more recent releases the strain of many, many passionate gigs show and TV's voice is positively husky. Back in 1983 through, he still had the vocal chords that made his vocals on The Adverts' albums easily the best of the punk era. On Channel Five they never really get a work out though. He fails to use any of the depth and range he had and the passion that has pervaded even his acoustic recordings is simply not here. I can understand in many ways why TV made an album like this - for someone of his talent to have been denied the kind of broader success and record label support he deserved must Have been incredibly frustrating and this album sounds like an attempt to be relevant to the times and break through to a wider audience. The bad news is that it didn't work in various ways and his later successes have been limited mainly to Germany. The good news is that he made much, much better albums after this one.
Just enough of TV's song writing ability shines through to raise this to 2 stars.
The other problem is the vocals. On more recent releases the strain of many, many passionate gigs show and TV's voice is positively husky. Back in 1983 through, he still had the vocal chords that made his vocals on The Adverts' albums easily the best of the punk era. On Channel Five they never really get a work out though. He fails to use any of the depth and range he had and the passion that has pervaded even his acoustic recordings is simply not here. I can understand in many ways why TV made an album like this - for someone of his talent to have been denied the kind of broader success and record label support he deserved must Have been incredibly frustrating and this album sounds like an attempt to be relevant to the times and break through to a wider audience. The bad news is that it didn't work in various ways and his later successes have been limited mainly to Germany. The good news is that he made much, much better albums after this one.
Just enough of TV's song writing ability shines through to raise this to 2 stars.
sproogle77