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Rating: Alongside the renowned "Marquee Moon," "77," "Suicide," "Pink Flag," "Horses," "Modern Dance," "Are We Not Men," "First Issue," "Unknown Pleasures," "Buy Contortions," "Killing Joke," this magical "Ultravox!" deserves a place in the showcase of dazzling debuts that changed the course of alternative rock, founding the various "new waves" in the late '70s.
Many, too many honors have been given to the mythical Midge Ure, an illustrious exponent of '80s synth-pop; the genius John Foxx deserved just as many, the mastermind of the early Ultravox, the more genuine, more rock ones, those who, despite being steeped in a futuristic imagination, gladly set aside the more sterile synthesizers (the guiding instrument of the second-wave Ultravox) to create intriguing and baroque harmonic fortresses, where bass-guitar-drums amiably conversed with the two most romantic instruments in the history of music: the piano and the violin (both courtesy of Billy Currie).
Among the many paths to formal renewal that interested rock music in the new-wave era, Ultravox (as un-American as one could expect at the time in the rock field) found the most ambivalent solution more congenial. Ambiguous because fundamentally still with one foot in the past, namely in the first half of the decade, the "progressive," symphonic, grandiose one, the art-rock one, that of Roxy Music, their direct forerunners. The peculiarity of early Ultravox (baroque in an era of essentiality; decadent after the death of glam) is precisely explained by the peculiarity of their supreme Masters, the inimitable band of Ferry, Eno, Mackay, and Manzanera, a case apart in the precious rock panorama of the early '70s (progressive and decadent, but without prolixity and garishness).
John Foxx, in particular, starts from Brian Ferry's grotesque crooning, which finds expression in the enchanting epos of "Life At Rainbow's End," their very own "Ladytron," or even better in the splendid "Slip Away," the best track on the album, an elegant, captivating, Viennese waltz to the core, a daydream that takes you straight to certain Ophuls films, to certain vertiginous long takes in aristocratic ballrooms... It's romantic, nineteenth-century music (in spirit clearly, certainly not in form!), which seems far from reality, from the street, from punk, from new-wave. The mellotron of "My sex" and the pathos of "I want to be a machine," a semi-acoustic ballad in crescendo, which seems to be a tribute to the quiet desperation of Pink Floyd of the Waters era or the poignant epitaphs of early King Crimson (early '70s, we're still there), seem to confirm the neo-romantic vocation of the English band.
And then where is the new-wave? Where is the new that advances? Where is the break with the past? Why should we put this record together with those of CBGB's? Because there are at least two tracks to recommend to fans of the great Stan Ridgeway (supreme "theorist" of new-wave): they are "Saturday Night In The City Of The Dead," a relentless metropolitan ride, and "The Wild, The Beautiful And The Damned," a showdown steeped in fatalism and bitterness, just like the legendary "Camouflage"... tracks capable of shading that daily epic, which constitutes the only possible glorification for a loser's life.
It's not over here. "Ultravox!" is fully new-wave, because the riff of "Wide Boys" could have come from Keith Richards' guitar, but the filtered singing and squared sound give it an android charm. But the track that more than any other projects the band into the '80s is the splendid "Dangerous Rhythm," a reggae track (like so many other new-wave classics, from "Prove It" to "Redondo Beach" to "Humour Me," not to mention Clash and the Police), but a cooled, crystallized reggae, forcibly transported from the sun of the Caribbean to the neon lights of Old Europe. It's a track that alone founds the new-romantic, Culture Club, Japan, a sweet and warm surrender to its own resignation. Surrender that echoes in the refrain of "Lonely Hunter," a chorus of lost angels...
An unmissable album, more complete than the subsequent and renowned "Ha! Ha! Ha!," too subservient, in my opinion, to the neurotic boogie of "Editions OF You," despite the classic "Hiroshima Mon Amour," another impeccable redefinition of romanticism for the new-wave era.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
03 Slip Away (04:18)
Enter me gently, I break in the light
Cover my eyes, with the rags of my life
Was I dreaming
Or did you say
The frontiers are falling
It's time to be slipping away
Let's slip away
Let's slip away
All things fall from me, the bonds and the veils
All things blow by me, my sorrows have sails
Was I dreaming
Or did you say
The empires are fading
It's time to be slipping away
Let's slip away
Let's slip away
What am I to do
Don't leave me
What is there to say, I really...
We're just wasting time
Let the night takes its place
Colour my eyes with the dusk of this wonderful day
Let's slip away
Let's slip away
Letters from lovers are lining my grate
Some came too early and some came too late
Were you speaking
Or did I say
The frontiers have fallen
It's time to be slipping away
As you call me
My hands they fall open
My mouth it is frozen
The chrysalis tumbles
I'm falling
Slow motion
Dissolve
04 I Want to Be a Machine (07:24)
I found the bones of all your ghosts
Locked in the wishing well
While birdsong gourmets dragged empty nets
I slumbered in my shell
In Mitternacht, die Mensch-Maschine kissed me on my eyes
I rose and left the fire-ladies
Glowing lonely in the night
With all the pornographers
Burning torches beneath the sea
I want to be a machine
I want to be a machine
I want to be a machine
I stole a cathode face from newscasts
And a crumbling fugue of songs
From the reservoir of video souls
In the lakes beneath my tongue
In flesh of ash and silent movies
I walked at boulevards again
A nebula of unfinished creatures
From the lifetimes of my friends
My, how your innocence has depraved me
I want to be a machine
I want to be a machine
I want to be a machine
Broadcast me, scrambled clean
Or free me from this flesh
Let the armchair cannibals take their fill
In every cell across wilderness
We'll trip such a strangled tango
We'll waltz a wonderland affair
Let's run to meet the tides tomorrow
Leave all emotion dying there in the star cold
Beyond all of your dreams
I want to be a machine
I want to be a machine
I want to be a machine
Ah!
06 Dangerous Rhythm (04:18)
Dangerous rhythm
Dangerous rhythm
Dangerous rhythm in the air
Stranger to stranger
We're both dressed for danger
Something is generating here
Oh, take off your halo
For the all-night inferno
Something is happening in the air
It's not like anything I've ever known before
And I don't care
Dangerous rhythm
Dangerous rhythm
Dangerous rhythm in the air
Surging and merging
Urgent and urging
Soft as a footstep on the stair
The red light is on now
My gravity's gone and how
I can feel something in the air
It's not like anything I've ever known before
And I don't care
Dangerous rhythm
Dangerous rhythm
Dangerous rhythm in the air
Dangerous rhythm
Dangerous rhythm
Dangerous rhythm in the air
Dangerous rhythm
Dangerous rhythm
Dangerous rhythm in the air
07 The Lonely Hunter (03:45)
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
I'm a lonely hunter, a hungry ghost
When you call a passion, you must pay the host
Look upon me as I thunder
I wonder if you wonder
How it feels to be
The lonely hunter?
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
The wind blows clouds across my cheek
My collar's up and my coat is sleek
Look upon me as I plunder
I wonder if you wonder
How it feels to be
The lonely hunter?
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
Achtung!
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
09 My Sex (03:01)
My sex
Waits for me
Like a mongrel waits
Downwind on a tightrope leash
My sex
Is a fragile acrobat
Sometimes I'm a novocaine shot
Sometimes I'm an Automat
My sex
Is often solo
Sometimes it short circuits then
Sometimes it's a golden glow
My sex
Is invested in
Suburban photographs
Skyscraper shadows on a car crash overpass
My sex
Is savage, tender
It wears no future faces
Owns just random gender
My sex
Has a wanting wardrobe
I still explore
Of all the bodies I knew
And those I want to know
My sex
Is a spark of electro-flesh
Leased from the tick of time
And geared for synchromesh
My sex
Is an image lost in faded films
A neon outline on a high-rise overspill
My sex
My sex
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