Adam Ant
Manners & Physique

Today I was supposed to review "Copper Blue" by Sugar, but I've just received this one from the USA. It’s dated 1989, produced in California, at that time a new nation of residence (more precisely, he was living in Beverly Hills, like all actors, and this new experience, to be honest, initially seemed really promising). Only four of the ten tracks were written together with his friend Marco Pirroni, while the others were either solo or with someone named André Cymone, as well as a track with a certain Kevin Rowland. Adam doesn’t even play bass anymore; Pirroni is on guitar and Cymone does everything else.

The sound has changed a lot compared to the previous "Vive Le Rock" but also to all past discography. More precisely, the amount of keyboards has increased, even more than on the new romantic album "Strip", while the famous dual drums have been replaced by a very American funky drumming, in the style of Cameo's "Word Up", so to speak. And it’s precisely the famous "Word Up" that the initial single yuppie "Room At The Top" resembles, a quirky little track that never takes off. You thought the initial riff of "Supermassive Black Hole" by Muse came from something by the Prince of Minneapolis, didn’t you? And yet it was cloned from this piece by Ant. Listen to the sample to believe it. In the following "Rough Stuff", as well as in all the remaining funky tracks, the DurAdam DurAnt play, particularly here with those "shackshoowowboomlaggalaggaboomlaggaboomshaboom" in the choruses. Cute, instead, with drums that almost resemble actual drums, is the title track. Unfortunately, instead of the horns from the "Friend Or Foe" album, his best solo album until then, here he adds very Californian keyboards, or rather very Beverly Hills: it's actually the sound of that famous instrumental track from the "Beverly Hills Cop" soundtrack, probably the only keyboard sound authorized at that time to circulate in California. The duranian funk continues in the horrid "U.S.S.A.", in which Adam urges the two superpowers to unite. He didn’t talk about politics in the monarch-opposing seventy-seven... what brings this lad to do politics in 1989?

The most horrid funky track of all is "Bright Light Black Leather"; much more on point, however, is the very funny "Piccadilly", where at one point Adam suggests that London parents keep their beautiful, fragrant, and appetizing eighteen-year-old daughters chained at home because they might risk "ending up badly, as they insistently seek to do". In the final "Anger Inc." (Adam hasn't exactly excelled in concluding his albums) he quotes Kerouac (don’t you dare touch him!) and none other than Albert Camus (but why exactly and necessarily my favorite writers, damn? "The Stranger" is the most devastating thing I’ve ever read in my life, along with a book by Marco Travaglio about Berlusconi :D).

The remaining episodes, the non-funky ones, are almost all saved. "If You Keep On" is the perfect example of how well Ant could work just by singing catchy little songs with practically no pretense, rather than being the legendary, the braggart, the man who always has to remind you that he’s got the manners and the physique. "Can't Set Rules About Love" is a rock ballad with singing in the verses that greatly resembles a famous piece by Formula 3: do I need to tell you which one? "Young, Dumb & Full Of It" is the episode closest to the rock n’ roll of "Vive Le Rock", but there are good wave nuances. In general, nothing outstanding and nothing memorable in the "adam-ic" discography, but all positive.

Three "traditional" tracks plus only two successful funkypop ones, however, do not save this work from the abyss. An album messed up from head to toe, because it starts once again (and even worse than previous times) from the character, from what (less and less musical and more and more cinematic/tabloid-like) revolves around it, and which therefore does not originate from inspiration, from the music, secondary in its own CD! A soundtrack to a film that doesn’t exist! Or that existed (-vas) only in the head of Adam Ant.

"Manners & Physique" became, for Adam's fans and critics, a sort of "certificate of artistic death". When, in 1995, he returns with the not only in my opinion splendid "Wonderful" - which I've already reviewed - it will be too late.