Poly Styrene
Translucence

THE REVIEW

"Translucence" is, from start to finish, a small act of dissent from the powerful and abrasive punk-rock of "Germs Free Adolescents": both are wonderful, each as much as the other, yet distant and formally opposed. Here, incredulously, we delve into lounge sounds that are caressing, but not languid; smoky, but not dark; ethereal, but consistent. We immerse ourselves in tracks brimming with jazz arrangements and pop melodies for flute and guitar, supported by slender and persistent percussion (tabla, rattles, drums) and counterpoints of organ or saxophone. Here, the fundamental element of the album floats and emerges: the enchanting and unconventional singing of Marianne Joan Elliott-Said, alias Poly Styrene. Her voice stretched like morning breezes among newly opened corollas; dreamy without indulgence, clear, filled with innocent grace and generous affection. The entirely self-written album, recorded in 1980, is thus presented, entirely sung in a subdued manner, without outbursts, yet enclosed in a single delicate, vibrant, and continuous tremor. Affable.

So where is the much-loved Poly from the debut of the seventies punk quintet X-Ray? The adorable Somali-London girl who screamed "There are people who think girls should be looked at but not listened to..."? The improbable heroine of feminist Punk, cheeky and awkward opponent of the all-powerful consumer society?

She is still here. She is always here. In these plastic and harmonious ballads of sui-generis pop-rock exoticism, idyllic, full of flutes, airy and light; lounge, not cocktail-lounge; pop, not easy-listening. In the most atypical "post-punk" of the era. Traveling with the spirit and the earth, somehow "free," immaterial but palpable, never coarse, never obvious. Now aiming to surpass the boundary between reality and imagination, perhaps in inner peace. And she carries and guides with herself, leaving more overwhelmed by emotion than persuaded by reason. Truth full of pathos, ethos full of raw and mature truth: springing peace and joy, captured at their origin. Nothing else.

Among the very happy episodes: "Dreaming," a transfiguration of "Bondage," dreamy, mellifluous, enchanting among diaphanous colors, "Day That Time Forgot," wavering, cordial, marvelously reciting the line "He demand your complete attention," "Translucent," which proceeds resolutely with the piano titillating a childish, yet tenacious and lyrical melody. And again the singing of a new siren for dreamy and naive odysseys, in "Bicycle Song," an amenable zigzag modulated with a small organ, "Sky Diver," radiant, and "Shades," ethereal and gentle.

Splendid, inevitable, an album unjustly, culpably ignored. Constrained into oblivion. A hidden treasure!

I am the Angel of reality,
glimpsed for a moment on the threshold.
... in me, I enclose being and knowing.
I am one like you, and what I am and know
for me, as for you, is the same thing.
(The Necessary Angel, Wallace Stevens)