Listening Post – Gary Numan – The Fury

Gary Numan – The Fury – 1985

Another year, another Gary Numan record. Time to LiveBlog.

1. The Fury – Maybe the ugliest and least interesting songs I’ve ever heard. Filled with samples from, what else, “Blade Runner”. Funny, Gary was a harbinger of that movie, calling his skin jobs “Replicas” years before Ridley Scott named them “Replicants” and now he’s so obsessed with the movie that he’s sampling it on his records. And it’s bad. The use of the term “New Anger” would rear it’s head a few years later, though. Not horrible in the end, just kind of plodding.
2. “This Disease” Sounding a lot like something off Berserker mashed up with Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer”. Not a good combination. As the lyrics say, “This is a bad decision”.

It’s nice to know that even Gary thinks the cover of the record is awful and probably put people off from buying it. I know it did me. He now says it makes him look like “he man who lost it all at Monte Carlo”. I agree. It’s awful. Gary, you’re not Bryan Ferry.

3. Your Fascination By 1985 everyone and their brother had a synthesizer and fancied themselves the next Thomas Dolby or Howard Jones. Numan sounds like them with the flu.
4. Miracles – a dirge dressed up in Manheim Steamroller clothing. I dunno, this just reminds me of a Christmas song gone bad.
5. The Pleasure Skin The drum machine is programmed. The chorale font on the moog is fired up. The echo chamber doubling on Gary’s voice is primed. And the result is…a song by definition only. Redundant at best. Gary sounds more like Adam Ant than ever.

This album is really trying my patience. I know that Allmusic rates it slightly higher than Berserker but at least Berserker sounded alive and had that “Child with a Ghost” song. So far this is, at best, a retread of mediocre material. If he was retreading his heyday or whipped out a guitar or something I might have more patience.

6. Creatures – Sounds like “One Vision” by Queen before it devolves into a cast off from Dance. Like “Boys Like Me” but nowhere near as good. And for a song to be nowhere near as good as something as mediocre as that is really something. I have to wonder how much Gary wishes he could have gotten Joan Armatrading to sing with him. But, really, Gary, she’s never gonna do it.

A lot of this record sounds like “Simply Irresistible” and other songs by Robert Palmer. I don’t know which came first but I know that one was better than the other. Guess which.

7. Tricks Hey! The sax is back! And it’s better than ever! (Psst, no it’s not but I’ve been drinking for the last three songs…) I think Gary Numan fancies himself the leader of some progressive jazz-electro fusion jam band. He’s not, you know. Points for trying? Okay. But I get no money for listening. So it’s a wash. And this song is bad.
8. God Only Knows Not the Beach Boys song but easily the most listenable on the record. The disembodied longing in Numan’s voice works here and works well. With the first track, the best offering on the record.
9. I Still Remember And that sax is back. What is Gary Numan’s obsession with this instrument? Oh, wait. It’s 1985. Quarterflash. Romeo Void. Huey Lewis. It was the 2nd coming of the saxophone in rock. Only when it started it was almost ironic how these new wave artists were appropriating one of the defining instruments of early rock and roll and using it to forward their minimalist (read:edgy) soundscapes. Maybe this sounded fresh 25 years ago. It doesn’t now. Superfluous sax solos always, to me, feel directionless and ambient, like a lead guitarist noodling through the pentatonic scale and not really writing anything for the audience’s ears to grab a hold of. Any good solo is like a verse hook or a chorus. You should WANT to hear it, to get to it. But in these instances they just come across as improvisation.

Gary’s overstaying his welcome with me…..

Grade: D+
ASide: Call Out the Dogs, God Only Knows,
BlindSide:
DownSide: This Disease, Your Fascination, Miracles