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Rating: Obviously it's not Ultravox, but Ultravox!…The exclamation point is very important and it seems to be a tribute to Neu!
...
Loving this record was a matter of pride, and pride is always a thing for losers, a form of defense, you know, a bit like saying I'm here too. After all, only losers listen to the right music, and only ugly ducklings turn into swans.
Poetically, pathetically, structurally poor with girls we were at zero. Some of us were almost handsome, others had the eloquence of Socrates, but none of that mattered. The fact is, women were for us such magical creatures that who ever had the courage to speak a word? So we just stood there, dazed and bemused, a thing that, at just the thought, makes me sad today.
Then there were all those cookie-cutter guys, lacoste clark's and tube jeans, and damn, the best girls would flock to them. In a few years' time, we would show those bastards. Meanwhile, while the kind Onan compassionately aided us, we had at least the satisfaction of music. Those dummies were stuck on "oh baby it's a wild world," while we, hell, we were ahead!
...
The day John Foxx left the group was declared a national day of mourning, although I'm not sure which nation it was, maybe just the one from my house to that of my best friend.
My first memory comes from an old black-and-white photo where he seemed like a cold and decadent wave hero or a kind of almost Bowie which meant more or less almost god. He also had something of Helmut Berger, Visconti's Ludwig, of whom he seemed a more ethereal and melancholic version, almost as if he were the most perfect paradigm of the idea of beauty according to Saint Baudelaire. All this contrasted greatly with the exclamation points that electrified the faces on the cover of “Ha!- Ha!- Ha!”, but, on reflection, it was precisely that contrast that made the whole affair unique. It meant there was aesthetics and there was also substance, and if we weren't yet ready for aesthetics, the substance we liked a lot.
But it's also true that, despite not understanding a damn thing, in that photo we sensed the relationship between a certain type of beauty and being somehow misfits. Foxx, a bit like Bowie at the end of “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” seemed to us a divine being, but also somehow out of place. But, as they say, these were unthought thoughts and, moreover, how could we ever have thought them? However, they would prove useful at the first click.
And anyway, we were only fifteen years old, like reading Alan Ford, having a snack with Girella, drinking a liter of coke in one gulp, but, above all, listening to this record. Because here you have all the best music in the world: the Velvet, Roxy, Bowie, the krauts from Germany, and even Brian the professor. But the thing is put in a way like when you make an omelet with leftovers, and it turns out to be something delicious, after all, even when the leftovers get pissed off the result is always surprising. And that's how revolutions come about, and there was indeed a revolution in which the bad guys were, at times, "rotten, dirty and imbecile" or refined situationist strategists. It was punk and in London, it was even on your doorstep, and even if you didn't want it, it stuck to you. John Foxx, to say, was punk like I am Maria Giovanna Elmi, yet without that four-letter word, a record like this cannot be explained.
Here, all together and all in one go, you have ice, heat, chaos, and intelligence, which, in one word, means a bomb, but a bomb always needs an igniter and in this sense, punk was really the best of the best. Never mind if later the lovers would go in opposite directions, punk to the right, futuristic coolness to the left, all okay, no doubt, but that feeling of a brain exploding with art while your butt jumps from the chair, gosh how much we still miss it today.
Even though the real hit, in this record, comes at the end, when after racing at breakneck speed all along, comes the ballad that, beyond knocking you down, carries the warmest melancholy into the cold of the future, indeed into the cold tout court. There, punk is no longer needed and all that energy sublimates into the no man's land of aesthetics and ghosts. "I cannot conceive, said Baudelaire, a type of beauty in which there is no unhappiness." Between life and the fact that life is not, uselessly wanders all the art we like best.
Then okay, Baudelaire is my delirium and I don't know what the good Foxx might think of it. His references seem to me to be others: futurism, Ballard, Duchamp, and other things we really knew nothing about at the time. For me, however, he will always remain the beautiful decadent prince seen in a pale black and white photo lost in the night of time. You don't mess with myths.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 ROckwrok (03:35)
Rockwrok
Rockwrok
Rockwrok
Rockwrokrockwrok
Blast off, the walls are down
Cast off, the wolves are out
Come on, there's no time, I can't wait
Rip off my clothes, I'm stripping yours
Harder we're starred, wired and barbed
What a magnificent disgrace
Come on, let's tangle in the dark, dark
F*ck like a dog, bite like a shark, shark
When it's wet and hot you want to rockwrok
Rockwrok, rockwrok
Rockwrokrockwrok
Penetration boys in hotel lifts
Invitations on sinking ships
The whole wide world fits hip to hip
In aircraft, destroyers and cinema foyers
The chastened, the chasing, amazing the neighbours
Gay, wild and willing, stripped of grace
A sombre rumba in the dark, dark
F*ck like a dog, bite like a shark, shark
The population's got to rockwrok
Rockwrok, rockwrok
Rockwrokrockwrok
Rockwrok
Rockwrok
Rockwrok
Rockwrokrockwrokrockwrokrockwrok
A doodlebugger in the dark, dark
F*ck like a dog, bite like a shark, shark
When they find the top you've got to rockwrok
Rockwrok, rockwrok
Rockwrokrockwrok
A nimble mambo in the park, park
F*ck like a dog, bite like a shark, shark
The population's got to rockwrok
Rockwrok, rockwrok
Rockwrokrockwrok
An anal sailor in the bar, bar
F*ck like a dog, bite like a shark, shark
When it's wet and hot you want to rockwrok
Rockwrok, rockwrok
Rockwrok, rockwrok
Rockwrok, rockwrok
Rockwrok, rockwrok
Rockwrok, rockwrok
Rockwrok, rockwrok
Rockwrok, rockwrok
A (???) in the car park
F*ck like a dog, bite like a shark, shark
There's nothing left for us, just rockwrok
Rockwrok, rockwrok
Rockwrokrockwrok
A willing waltzer in the car stark (?)
F*ck like a dog, bite like a shark, shark
(???) you want to rockwrok
Rockwrok, rockwrok
Rockwrok
04 Distant Smile (05:21)
Sometimes I find I drift away
Behind a distant smile
Light years ago I think someone spoke
Quizzical glances behind cigarette smoke
She drew the curtains at the end of the day
And then we laughed because the room sailed away
Fancy glitter in the summer arcades
Then autumn leaves fall by a winter lane
Piano echoes and the perfume still lingers
But you fell through my fingers like sand
With a distant smile
A distant smile
A distant smile
Somehow I always seem to be
Adrift in other times with a distant smile
(???) the sound of the streets
The city's glittering like diamonds in heat
Our secret destination, touch down in the haze
As the cameraman pans away
Hey look, it's a long lost horizon
Private oceans you can surface a sunrise in
Hearts well ? dodging logic
But nevertheless still permanently surprised
Behind a distant smile
A distant smile
A distant smile
Somehow I always seem to be
Adrift in other times behind a distant smile
You will see (?)
07 While I'm Still Alive (03:16)
Playing the game
With the chips on my shoulder
Checking in the mirror
As my coffee cup gets colder
Stagger and swagger
Combing my hair
If tomorrow's not there
Then at least today's all mine
Chorus:
While I'm still alive
While I'm still alive
While I'm still alive
Strutting my stuff
I'm blagging the damage
From coupling with headlines
I was suckled on salvage
The fighting's exciting
The age is dramatic
I'm crackling with static
Just jiving to survive
(Chorus)
Take a stroll down the side roads, I know you want to
A shock in the dark can be good for your heart, oh yeah
(Chorus)
Scuffling along
On the crest of a wave
Laughing and grafting
Or jerking and working
Striking a match
Where life is a gas
I need the flash
To make it all worthwhile
(Chorus)
08 Hiroshima Mon Amour (05:12)
Somehow we drifted off too far
Communicate like distant stars
Splintered voices down the 'phone
The sunlit dust, the smell of roses drifts, oh no
Someone waits behind the door
Hiroshima mon amour
Riding inter-city trains
Dressed in European grey
Riding out to echo beach
A million memories in the trees and sands, oh no
How can I ever let them go?
Hiroshima mon amour
Meet beneath the autumn lake
Where only echoes penetrate
Walk through polaroids of the past
Features fused like shattered glass, the sun's so low
Turns our silhouettes to gold
Hiroshima mon amour
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Other reviews
By dEDOLUZ1
"What makes this album so essential? The violin? The keyboards? The fusion of punk elements and decadent melodies?"
"Hiroshima Mon Amour, with our Foxx’s singing never so moving. Tear-inducing."
