Associates
Fourth Drawer Down

Considered a minor entity of the new wave, the Scottish Associates are in fact more than Soft Cell the British answer to Suicide and D.a.f. Not that their offering can match that of these two master groups that preceded them, but at least at the start of their career they also represented a personal version of the “electronic duo” with Alan Rankine painting suggestive synthetic scores and Billy McKenzie (who unfortunately has recently joined the group of Curtis, Borland, and Williams) intervening with his powerful and emphatic voice, both the cross and delight of all their albums.

Rankine's personal masterpiece is already at the beginning with “White Car In Germany” and in the instrumental reprise “An Even Whiter Car” where he amazes with the initial mechanical advance similar to a slowed-down 90s techno track. Mckenzie creeps in shortly after with his elegant 19th-century dandy lyrical voice that had so little to do with other new wave voices of the era, and perhaps precisely for this reason made the Associates a unique and hard-to-imitate group. Other unforgettable tracks are “Kitchen Person” with a marvelous loop of rampant guitars and the voice, this time more restless and desperate, which seems to come from another world, the minimalist and nocturnal “Q Quarters”, the instrumental and rhythmic “Kissed”. Just to reiterate the genius and unruliness of the group, the album ends with the track “Blue Soap” with McKenzie singing a soul tune in the shower.

The album title refers to the drawer where the two kept the amphetamines. The record, which is not really their second album but rather a collection of singles, b-sides, and unreleased tracks all produced in '81, is not a masterpiece but still an original and daring work not to be forgotten.