Orange Juice
You Can't Hide Your Love Forever

It’s difficult to grasp the impact of an album like “You can’t hide your love forever” if you haven’t experienced the specific context in which it was created. It was the very early eighties, dark times for alternative music, "dark" indeed. The post/punk sounds were bold and innovative, certainly fascinating but almost always heavy as rocks. I add that often the faces of their performers were as sad as if their cat had just died, even gloomy and vampiric in the case of bands like Bauhaus and Killing Joke. All of them, regardless of the mask they wore, were chasing the ghost of Joy Division and adored its cold and essential style. Today, with the undeniable advantage of historical perspective, the biggest flaw of the entire post-punk movement was taking itself too seriously, with people feeling like Salinger just because they had written two desperate lyrics and four minor chords. The risk of becoming stereotypes of unattainable models like Ian Curtis and Siouxsie Sioux, without having either the appeal or the résumé, became a bad habit for many Londoners.

Elsewhere, instead, up in the Scottish highlands to be precise, where for 10 months a year if you go out without a scarf you'll catch pneumonia, and it's better to stay home strumming or making love, there were those who thought very differently. Edwin Collins’ Orange Juice, former Nu Sonics (a name, a program...), had different ideas and managed to reevaluate music infused with optimism, moreover, taking themselves very lightly. For those times, the approach was extremely challenging and did not end with these premises. Like many of their contemporaries, Orange Juice looked to New York's CBGB's underground but surprisingly also to the glittering Studio 54, fetishizing each of the two references equally. The credit of Edwin Collins and his mentor Alan Horne was noticing that post-punk "sourness" had become somewhat tiresome. And musically, the intuition was to juxtapose the edgy, sharp guitar work of Velvet Underground with the gritty funk of Chic and the staccato chords of Northern Soul. In short, a musical pudding in full Scottish style, minus the bagpipes and kilts.

A handful of singles that calling memorable would be an understatement, when you consider the immaculate beauty of songs like “Blue Boy” and “Simply Thrilled Honey”. Oh, I'll open parentheses here: if by chance you have some at home, perhaps with the original cover, I'll be happy to trade them for the latest CD of Mahmood or some other trash act from talent shows... Then the inevitable escape of OJ from the magnificent but amateurish Postcard Records of Alan Horne, a brief stint at Rough Trade and arrival at Polydor, a safe harbor from which to launch their debut album. “You can’t hide your love forever” is perhaps the most eagerly anticipated record release I can remember. I still remember when Alberto Campo announced it nonchalantly on Radio Flash, between the debut of 23 Skidoo and the new, very dark The Comsat Angels. Those were the times when Postcard had proudly and boastfully declared itself “The Sound of Young Scotland”, and I went crazy for Edwyn Collins' Davy Crockett hat and those funny graphics full of drumming kittens, which I discovered many years later belonged to the magnificent pen of Louis Wain. I rushed out on my moped like a Bastianini of the last century and showed up at Rock and Folk with very little patience, forcing Alberto himself to sell me his personal copy, as he told me he preferred Pigbag (!?). I guess I really made a deal that time...

Personal memories aside, “You can’t hide your love forever”, Orange Juice’s major debut, finally came out in February 1982 and managed to climb up to number 21 on the UK charts, infested with “new romantics" bands and mixed rubbish. Like many other truly innovative albums, it was not well understood and was too quickly lost in the musical meat grinder of the eighties, only to be periodically fished out as one of the truly seminal albums of that era. In reality, the songs on “You can’t hide your love forever” are simple, with great spontaneity and innocence, decidedly out of their time and therefore timeless. And above all, many of the choices present in “You can’t hide your love forever”, whether found interesting or not, were the first of their kind, and this cannot be forgotten.

The album opens with “Falling & Laughing”, slightly sweetened compared to the legendary Postcard version but just as enchanting. It was the track that more than any other helped define Orange Juice as the almost “accidental” architects of much of what would eventually become universally known as “britpop”. It's a song that connects that imaginary line that goes from the Four Tops all the way to the Clash, if such a line ever existed. In any case, “Falling & Laughing” is a gem of playful lyricism that miraculously manages to combine vulnerability and toughness, in the successful gamble of making the soul of George McRae coexist with the jingle-jangle of The Byrds. For me, it could be the Champions League anthem because it moves me every time I hear it again.

Apart from the subsequent “Untitled Melody”, in my personal opinion the most predictable of the entire batch, the rest of the album has no dips in tone. What to say, for example, of “Wan Light”, a superb “pop song for lefties”, written and sung by the talented guitarist James Kirk. Or “Tender Object”, harking back to the early Postcard glories and partly recalling the nervous guitar work of cousins Josef K? Great stuff, folks. And the classic non-classic, “Dying Day”, recently covered by the eternal fans Teenage Fanclub, is an exquisitely pop piece with an ironically romantic lyric and a stunning melody. At the time, I was surprised by the closing of the first side with Al Green's cover “L.O.V.E”, which was the intriguing single supporting the album's release. Many wondered what Memphis Sound style had to do with Scottish punk. Later, I understood that the answer lay entirely in these three minutes of miraculous soul pop balance, complete with brass and backing vocals. Delightful.

The second side of the vinyl is even better. It opens with the lively “Intuition Told Me” and straight into the splendid jangle mood of “Upwards & Onwards”, one of my absolute favorites. Then the raucous “Satellite City” anticipates the group’s pseudo funky turn in “Rip it Up”. And the subsequent sparkling “Three Cheers for Our Side”, once again the brainchild of James Kirk, and once again a winning track, with a clear and sparkling sound, under the false guise of a naive divertissement. Then everyone stands up for the “classic” of the Caledonian sound, that “Consolation Prize” which years later Edwyn performed on stage with his idol Mick Jones and his longtime friend Roddy Frame; go and look for the live version on YouTube, it's pure enjoyment! But if I really have to choose the ace from the pack, then I choose “Felicity”, already in the Nu Sonics set list, a “three-minute song” that exudes enthusiasm from every pore. A spectacular crescendo, with that joyful chorus that I used to shout with a broom in hand as a microphone, while my mother yelled from the other room to turn down the volume otherwise... you understand, it was already great satisfaction for a young guy. The album closes with the slow “In a Nutshell” which, although intriguing, ultimately seems a bit predictable for those who, like me, never loved Edwyn Collins in a crooner version.

Ultimately, the strength of “You can’t hide your love forever” was demonstrating that post-punk could turn in a different direction, that Stax and Atlantic Soul rhythms could be infused into a traditionally “new wave” sound, thanks to well-thought-out bass lines that, I'm going to make a bold claim now, would not have been out of place on a Stevie Wonder record. The album was proof that alternative music could be played, but with a smile on the lips instead of a stick up the ass. Which didn't necessarily mean getting on a boat with a bunch of girls like Duran Duran or dressing as a Caribbean pirate like Adam Ant. There was another way, and Orange Juice showed it.

From another perspective, the album represents, like few other records, the alternative spirit of the early '80s, even though, paradoxically, it was released by a major label. Certainly, the production of Adam Kidron (but who the hell was he then?) partially dampened the contagious and chaotic energy of the Postcard singles. But what remained unchanged was the emotional charge of the group. The songs are not masterpieces, okay, and you will never find them in the “megamix” charts of Rolling Stone, next to “Imagine” and “Stairway to Heaven”. But I don't think that's really important. It is the great heritage of attitude and style handed down to those who came after that constitutes the real hallmark of the record, beyond the songs themselves. Without a group like Orange Juice, the Smiths and the entire C86 scene that led to wonderful labels like Creation and Sarah Records, and up to the long wave of the new century that gave us interesting bands like Belle & Sebastian and Franz Ferdinand, wouldn’t have existed.

History tells us that at the end of 1982 “Rip it Up” was released, and thanks to the successful titular single, Edwyn began his “mainstream” career as an interpreter and producer with modest success. But by then, James Kirk had already left, along with much of the magic of that raw yet unique sound. And if Collins is remembered today, years after the “terrible blow” from which he miraculously survived (to the joy of his wife, mine, and all his fans), it is more for that innocent record, with dolphins happily swimming on the cover, than for everything else. And also the fact that it is the only true album that the Collins and Kirk team realized together, before parting ways forever, makes it even more unique and essential to own. To me, Scotland, eternally young, is encapsulated in those grooves.