Cutting Crew
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Introduction:

I have the feeling that I'm the only actual Italian owner of all five albums released by this English group (with initial, substantial Canadian connections), formed in the mid-eighties and still active, having faced challenges, bereavements, uncertainties, and long pauses between releases along its journey.

And to start with this fifth and currently last work dated 2015... damn, what an ugly cover! A guy covered in stove pipes emerging from a hotel pool and, in another internal photo inside the package, going to lie on a sunbed. No figurative reference, like I don’t know, to the name of the group, the musical genre, or any of the lyrics. Nothing, huh!

Context:

Aside from this, it’s evident that for Cutting Crew, the wheel of fortune is turning again in the right direction lately: after a very spartan fourth album, poorly produced and insufficiently distributed, this release smells of a more than decent budget available, starting with the package and continuing with production, sounds, the number of musicians involved, and meticulous liner notes.

The first three releases of Cutting Crew were great, very great... especially the first two. Particularly the first, in my opinion, the best album of 1986 (a year moreover extremely asphyxiating for rock, one of the worst overall).

Strengths and Shortcomings:

On the positive side, the work is extremely professional, played and arranged with extreme precision and skill, produced brilliantly, varied, and not tiresome.

There were many weapons available to Cutting Crew at the start of their career: starting with the talent of the leader Nick Van Eede, both in terms of evocative and romantic voice and compositional quality. Continuing with the excellent guitarist who was by his side, the late Kevin MacMichael who passed away nearly twenty years ago. A guy so full of musicality, synthesis, and inventiveness that his guitar phrases constantly grabbed attention and often risked overshadowing the esteemed voice of the partner and all that foreground of keyboards with great sounds that adorned the pieces.

The initial rhythm section (from the first two eighties albums) was also quite noteworthy, despite the difficult period for their instruments, given the trend of fake drums and rubbery basses at the time. Particularly, drummer Frosty Beedle was an accomplished musician, creative and powerful.

Nothing remains today: MacMichael is dead, and the group for a long time now coincides exactly with its frontman, who moreover has changed his way of singing, banalizing it... ugh!

Album Highlights:

“Looking for a Friend” is very reminiscent of Little Feat with that double guitar rhythm, a wide acoustic and full-bodied on one hand and the other electric, tight and funky. More brass here and there, a nice instrumental break in the middle, a lot of class... exactly as it often happens wonderfully with Little Feat.

“Berlin in Winter” starts with a grand piano and an intense, emphatic voice just as Bruce Springsteen often likes to do. All well done, all overlookable.

With “San Ferian,” the band fully embraces country rock: acoustics and mandolin, bass drum instead of the kick drum, night-time chorus around the fire under the stars. The simplest and one of the best.

In “As Far As I Can See,” van Eede for once remembers his inimitable hoarse and sexy timbre, enough to sufficiently prick the ears of his old admirers. But then the melody, despite good moments (when the vocals stretch and gain power to conclude the chorus), fails to be sufficiently memorable. Beautiful and elegant instead the electric guitar solo, as well as the exquisite piano that binds everything together.

As occasionally happens, the best track is the last one in the lineup. It's titled “(She Just Happened To Be) Beautiful”: it starts acoustically and quietly, just guitar and touching voice. Then come the sax, organ, and something else, but it remains fundamentally a piece focused solely on the leader of Cutting Crew, and finally, there is ample emotion and a desire to listen to it again immediately.

The Rest:

The opener “Till the Money Runs Out” is blatantly Tom Petty spit out: a country rock inflated by brass, with that type of telegraphed melody where you already know where it's going, a genre of Americana, to me decidedly insignificant.

“Kept On Lovin’ You” is a slow and savvy rhythm & blues, indistinguishable from a hundred others of its kind, that crossed the careers of people like Billy Joel, Joe Cocker, or Tom Jones, or even Train, come on. In short, ultra-American music produced in London, the Barbados, and Norway... because music is not about where you were born and live, but about what has captured your heart. It's strange, however, to hear confirmation of this reality from Cutting Crew, after six decades of career dedicated to completely different things.

Ironically, the confidential and somewhat crooner piece was missing, and here it is: “Already Gone”. Somewhere between the Eagles when Glenn Frey was the solo voice, the less goofy Elvis Presley, and even Roy Orbison. Drums with brushes, occasional melancholic suspensions of the rhythm... a nearly Mexican trend. More than ever, no trace of England in this music! Curiously, it ends with a brief calypso coda that fades out, in a jam session style. Surely this last part is an impromptu creation from the studio recording sessions.

“Biggest Mistake of My Life” is a joyous up-tempo with gospel choirs. Van Eede's “southern” voice brings thoughts again to the late Tom Petty. The usual crop of brass here and there, especially in the crowded, talkative, and feedback-laden finale.

“Only for You” is largely confidential, with the singer's voice particularly soft and melancholic, surrounded by shimmering and psychedelic guitars. Like everything else, valid but NOT memorable as an important song should always be.

Final Judgment:

Surprising adult and super Yankee album from a group so far formally belonging to the youthful British pop rock of the late eighties; perfect sounds, maximum sound quality, impeccable production, and packaging but with an atmosphere that is too “conformist adult,” let's say, with a series of American stereotypes recalled in turn. The vocal delivery of the leader, though still remarkable, has lost its splendid peculiarities along the way; whether intentionally or unfortunately, the result is that it spreads another veil of anonymity over this music, already permeated by exercises in style more than by independent inspiration.

Three and a half stars, because these are tough times for rock and in the just-past decade, it isn’t as if I have come across tons of albums better than this one. In comparison with the first two Cutting Crew albums of the eighties, both five stars, it would deserve no more than two.