Thompson Twins
Into The Gap

THE REVIEW

When playing chart-topping pop and blatantly striving to strike poses and looks that impress the eye even before the ear, there is only one way not to seem insignificant, if not unpleasant, especially to those who deeply love music and can barely stand the excessive superstructures that may accompany it: to still have great pieces, beautiful songs, well-made records.

This is the case for this album by the Thompson Twins: it contains good melodies, well-arranged and even better produced (in the style of the time, for we are in the full-blown colorful and synthetic eighties), disco-like but substantial, catchy yet intelligent, in which the few, but clear musical ideas of the group leader Tom Bailey, as well as his average yet competent voice, are brought out to the best by dynamic and particularly bright arrangements.

The credit for this goes to the producer, the talented and unfortunately prematurely deceased Alex Sadkin, who was based in the Bahamas and had cut his teeth in the seventies with people like Bob Marley, so he knew very well what to do to inject doses of brightness and rhythm into the British musical grayness of these three proletarian lads, all hailing from London's squat apartments, the occupied flats of the capital.

Thus, having quickly moved on from the makeshift solutions of illegally drawing electricity from a neighboring meter, and other similar tricks, to the joys of music charts across half of Europe, the three signed this, their third album in 1984, which can be identified as the peak of their career. The right wave would last another couple of years, after which one of the three friends, the mulatto keyboardist Joe Leeway, would leave due to the usual issues of underestimation and lack of adequate creative space. The two survivors, Bailey and the redhead Alannah Currie (who were also a couple in private at the time) would continue until 1993, with increasingly less extensive feedback until their final surrender.

Returning to Sadkin, he thus becomes the architect of a brilliant and agile electronic weave for all nine tracks on the list, based on the synthesis of percussive and ethnic sounds (marimbas, rattles, and guiros all the way), managing to convey warmth and naturalness to the sound output, despite the minimal role reserved for traditional instruments such as piano, some electric guitar arpeggios, and sporadic harmonica and melodica interventions.

"You Take Me Up" is the album's most striking track, featuring African-like choruses responding to Bailey's vocal line, as well as suggestive counterpoints from Leeway's melodica. "Day After Day" borrows a bit from the semi-spoken and whimsical vocal style of the Talking Heads. "Sister Of Mercy" mixes piano and Latin percussion with the traditional, danceable four-on-the-floor kick drum, for a funky yet as melodic as possible. "Hold Me Now" is my favorite, with a hypnotic and insistent, circular singing style.

However, there are no fillers; the musical quality remains constant throughout the album, supported by adequate variety. At the time, there were even better things to listen to in this genre (like Tears For Fears and Talk Talk, for instance), but on this occasion, the Thompson Twins were able to stand on par with the best.