Groovey Blarney

Overall Album Score: 7.8 out of 10

Who's not to like Gary Numan? OK, a lot of people don't like Gary Numan for good reasons. His songwriting principle is "less is more." As it is often said about him, he can write songs that anybody regardless of musical genius or technical abilities could write or perform. But as I hope we all know, that's not really true. You can't grab a random person off the street, and honestly expect them to be able to write a Gary Numan song even if they had all the right equipment. Numan has an artistic sensibility that's far from common...

But anyway, this is minimal music and usually without any pop hooks. Perhaps catchy melodies would only interfere with the "less is more" philosophy. The songs are based on very lifeless and robotic grooves and unnatural chord progressions, which naturally has a tendency to grow monotonous. The only chance of them being any good is if the groove is catchy in a primitive way or successfully hypnotic. In Tubeway Army anyway, the instrumental arrangements aren't always interesting in of themselves. He doesn't waste too many notes or goes too deeply in excess, although this album certainly has a few moments of flooded electric guitar solos and synthesizers.

Yes, this is all quite different music, but just because he's trying something different doesn't necessarily mean that his music is good. Speaking as someone who think he enjoys overly repetitive, "minimalist" music (I have a bunch of Philip Glass CDs, so there you go), some of this music is awfully difficult for me to take. Needless to say, if the farthest you've ever ventured in your musical endeavors from Carpenters albums is Dark Side of the Moon, you're going to hate this album like you hate cancer.

As you might have guessed, this was strongly influenced by David Bowie's and Brian Eno's Low --- His music has that stripped down and vaguely 'incomplete' feeling to it. It's funny that I can even imagine Numan's voice being a cross between Bowie's and Eno's singing voice. He has Bowie's same tone but Eno's plain stability. He doesn't have the greatest voice, but I guess any fancy vocals would interfere with his "less is more" policy! Besides, his voice suits the robotic tendencies of his music perfectly. All that said, Numan doesn't seem to be to the point where he realizes exactly what made Low so charming, but ... well, he was certainly close enough to warrant a second try at it!

I'm just going to say that this album has its problems, and Numan had a ways to go before he'd really master this. That's arguable, though, and I'm sure there are going to be some people foaming at the mouth after reading that. Undobutedly, some fans prefers this more guitar-oriented Tubeway Army to his more synth-pop oriented albums of his peak years Telekon and The Pleasure Principle. Honestly, his musical "minimalism" didn't change much through the early '80s (the extent I'm familiar with him at the moment), but I believe his creativity only flourished. Most importantly, his later albums have much more interesting arrangements, which sometimes go directions that are worth treasuring.

I don't wish to suggest that his early album isn't good. It's interesting and decent though not always. I certainly enjoy many of these songs such as the guitar-heavy "Friends" and the poppish "Life Machine." My vote for the best song of the album is certainly the wonderful "Joe the Waiter," which is also in a pop vein, but the instrumentation is a little more quaint, creative and exotic. Luckily, his future works would tend to travel down that vein... though not always... (Gary Numan's an interesting character --- I'm pretty shaky about trying to define anything about him at the moment...)

Finally, I'm going to make an important public announcement: I am not reviewing the entire CD re-packaging of Tubeway Army. The real CD release consists of 25 tracks. The first 12 tracks are the original album and the final 13 tracks consist of a bootleg called Living Ornaments '78. Surprisingly, the tracks on the bootleg are completely different than the song albums, so this is indeed a valuable addition. However, the sound recording is so horrible that I don't get pleasure out of listening to it whatsoever. The only people who would appreciate it are Gary Numan fanatics who probably don't need to be reading this review! So, instead of letting this recording drag down the score of the original album, I'm going to conveniently ignore it and just acknowledge its existence in this brief paragraph. (Also, I'm lazy.)

Overall Album Score: 7.8 out of 10 (Gary Numan's career was off to a rather rocky start with this debut, but it does end up showing tons of promise.)

Average Song Score: 8.0 (These aren't bad songs... But we know that Numan had the artistic capability of being even better!)

Album Tilt: 7.5 (Spotty in quality.)

Artist Rating: 8.0 (It's artistic music, but he doesn't quite seem to be to the point where he's being truly creative yet.)

Track Reviews

Listen to the Sirens 8.5/10

When listening to the first Gary Numan song ever released on a studio album, you're going to have to make sure you "Listen to the Sirens." You know, just in case there happens to be a tornado around... Alternately, there probably won't be a tornado, so you can just listen to this song. It begins with a pulsating synth rhythm and then Numan pipes up with some robotic vocals. Soon, the song builds up a bit (adding new rhythms and instruments and subtracting along the way). Numan manages to make this sound pretty fresh throughout although you still get the feeling that your senses are getting slightly bored. I'm being as nice as possible. This is an interesting song, but it's not incredibly inspired.

My Shadow in Vain 7.5/10

This sounds like he's using the riff from "My Sharona" but for more repetitive and robotic effect. This one tends to get a little more monotonous than the previous track. The primitive melody is OK for what it tries to do, but you still wish that his melody was a little more interesting.

Life Machine 9/10

This is a tad bit poppier and more streamlined than the previous two tracks, but that's not saying much!! The groove is hypnotizing, the vocals are robotic and the groove is disjointed. But as far as I'm concerned, this one really works. It's simple but it's catchy in an abnormal sort of way. Those glassy synthesizers he stacks on in the middle of the track are kind of neat!

Friends 9.5/10

A neat song. It's still overly simple and repetitive, but he's using heavy guitars to prove his point instead of synthesizers. He even lets the guitar do a little bit of improvising here. So this ends up being one of the more "flooded" songs. Numan's vocals even sound flabbergasted here, at times. Well, just for that this song gains my endorsement!

Something's in the House 7/10

His chord progressions are so simple they're awesome. That's pretty much all you can think about! But that doesn't mean that he can capture our attention with an overly simple and peculiar progression. His melody doesn't do much but follow it, and the instrumentals don't change much at all until about the 90 second mark. Then, the instrumentals take on a new groove (featuring a kind of neat synthesizer and heavy guitars). But then they just return to that same old groove. There is a considerable attempt at creating an atmosphere, but it's too little and too late...... I'm not even letting myself get hypnotized........

Everyday I Die 6.5/10

A bit more delightful. And when I say that, I mean the instrumentals are of a higher register. Funny that the lyrics are about *ahem* pleasuring yourself. Honestly, the music itself is pretty similar to the previous songs. The groove is disjointed, and the chord progression is simple. The distinctive bit about this song is the ghoulish vocal effect he uses at the end. Honestly, this song isn't that capturing... I'm really trying...

Steel and You 8.5/10

Numan's getting rather creative, which I appreciate immensely. It begins with a very very dark and heavy synthesizer, and some saw-synths pick up... Slowly a rather catchy and disjointed groove using heavy guitars begins to fade in. The guitars and a drum beat are the only instruments, so this can still be considered "minimal." I generally like this song not just for the intro, but there's some nice soloing bits he does with the guitars in the middle of the track... (Power chords, eh? That's getting rather pompous, isn't it? That's OK with me, man!!)

My Love is a Liquid 8/10

The harmonic progressions are more varied, which makes the structure a tad more interesting. The groove is very disjointed, but it's somewhat interesting to hear it run through this progression. Numan's vocals are clearer and a little more bizarre here. I'm not too enthusiastic about those "atmospheric" sections that just seem to consists of a wavey synthesizer. But all the elements combine to make a pretty interesting song to sit through... Who knows about that synthesizer, which just seems to be wasting time...

Are You Real 7.5/10

This predominantly uses some pretty heavy electric guitars. This gives the song nice body ... but just as the groove was finally starting to get old, he brings in some crazy sounding synthesizers to make this sound weird!

The Dream Police 7/10

A pretty neat groove, and it's a bit of a shame that I'm not enjoying it more than on the base level. Well, I guess I'll have to come to terms with the fact that little (if anything) Numan does warrants being taken to heart! Nothing about the song is catchy though, and even that strange groove gets old rather quickly.

Jo the Waiter 9.5/10

Numan decides to be robotic with an acoustic guitar here. Just when that gets a little bit dull, Numan gives this a bit of an instrumental "explosion." The instrumentals are engaging and I like what the bass guitar is playing. This turns out to be one of the best songs from the album not just because the melody is catchier (though that's certainly true), but the instrumentation is unique and varied --- Yes, Gary Numan can be brilliantly creative after all!!

Zero Bars (Mr. Smith) 7/10

And the final song is one of those overly robotic tracks. Though he certainly does pretty well to vary up the effort throughout, but honestly not enough. Its novelty wears off pretty quickly, and there's nothing engaging about the groove or melody. He slowly fades it out, and... the album is over. (Unless you're going to listen to the bootleg concert section, which I'm not going to review.)

I will be in grief forever if you don't send me your thoughts about this album here.