Gary Numan – I, Assassin – 1982
So, what happens when you take Gary Numan, introduce him to a genius fretless bass player, Pino Palladino, and tell him, “hey, it’s been a year and ‘Dance’ wasn’t that big a seller, we need a new record.”?
You get a weird mismatch of new wave and smooth jazz. It’s not that “I, Assassin” is awful, in fact what Numan is trying to do is build on the motifs he was exploring on Dance but he fell so much in love with Palladino’s playing that he just let the bassist and his instrument drive the songwriting and, well, all of the music.
The result is a tiresome and exhausting exercise in retreaded music each of which have the added benefit of being 2 minutes too long. I can just picture Gary in the studio, grooving to the jams led by his newfound genius (who would, in fact, go on to quite an illustrious career) and wanting it to never stop.
Sadly, someone really should have stepped in and put us all out of our misery.
It’s not that all the songs are “bad”. It’s just that they are not “good”. By any stretch. “White Boys and Heroes” tries way to hard to be David Bowie but we already have a Bowie, Gary, and you’re no Bowie. The faux blues on “The 1930s Rust” almost succeeds but I just couldn’t get past the harmonica. Harmonica! On a Numan record. Okay, points for working out of your wheelhouse, but detract all those points for marrying those sounds (fretless bass, world rhythms, harmonica) with that detached robot voice. Just can’t get past it.
Some songs just feel like holdovers from Dance, like “Music for Chameleons”. But most of it is just so uneventful that I forgot what I was listening to.
I, Assassin is the first album that makes me wonder if Gary has any ideas left or if the next 10 albums are going to be torture.
Grade D
ASide: The 1930’s Rust
BlindSide:
DownSide: A Dream of Siam, I Assassin, Oh, hell. Just about the rest of the album.
