Prefab Sprout
Steve McQueen

THE REVIEW

Those who consider music not just a pastime, but a delightful passion, well know that there are albums and songs inextricably tied to pivotal moments, marking turning points in our lives; contributing, in a way not at all marginal, to shaping them, to creating the psychological conditions, so to speak, for them to occur.
There are other albums that, instead, seem to have always been there, ones you can no longer do without: they are now a part of you; they are so fully absorbed that you find it quite challenging to place them in the correct historical-existential perspective. These are the albums that don’t announce themselves. They rush towards you, and you immediately realize they are exactly the music and words you were waiting for, managing to fully give voice to that more ancient, instinctive part of you, which often occupies the largest room in that sort of labyrinthine apartment designed by Escher that is our personality. It happens, in some respects, like a fortunate romantic encounter, when it seems, from the very first moment, that you have known the person standing before you forever: the mists dissipate and you manage, in that instant, to glimpse all the unspeakable joys and inevitable sorrows that inexorably await you.

If I had to point out one of these fateful albums, probably the first name that would come to mind is "Steve McQueen" by Prefab Sprout.
It is not only one of the best collections of pop songs of the post-Beatles era. It is also the most convinced attempt that, in some respects, arouses admiration as well as astonishment from Paddy McAloon, an excellent songwriter and the soul of the group, to succeed in the utopian endeavor that still tires him: to write the perfect song. Flipping through its "pages" is like looking once again at a beloved family album: you always discover some new detail; and the feelings those sometimes faded photos evoke not only renew themselves but also enrich.
Thus, periodically, I lose myself and delve into the country of "Faron Young," electrified by the skillful hands of the "maieutic" Thomas Dolby; in the crystalline and calibrated melodies of "Bonny," of "Appetite" ("Then I think I'll name you after me / I think I'll call you appetite..."), in the superb and haunting "When Love Breaks Down" ("When love breaks down / The things you do / To stop the truth from hurting you / When love breaks down / The lies we tell, / They only serve to fool ourselves..."); I seek and find confirmations in the soul-jazz textures of "Goodbye Lucille #1," in the ethereal chamber bossa nova of "Horsin' Around," in that true compendium of light music that is "When The Angels," with Bacharach and Cole Porter as tutelary deities.

You grow, you change in quite surprising ways, you almost become another person after twenty years. But listening to albums like these reveals something that, deep down, you have always known, and that is that you always remain at the mercy of the same emotions and the same feelings.