Greg: "And that's because both the drummer and the guitarist used to rehearse with us and they've obviously learnt something."
Pat: "That's the most arrogant statement Hue and Cry have yet made — we taught Lloyd Cole and the Commotions all they know — you print that."
— Pat and Greg Kane (Hue & Cry)
There seemed to be a trend among British pop stars of the late eighties to hate pop music. During my year of being an avid reader of both Smash Hits and Number One, I read a lot of interviews and I was always struck by how little most of them cared for what their contemporaries were doing. They all seemed to worship Marvin Gaye and their musical heroes were largely drawn from old Motown and soul. Rock and metal acts were devoted to old school rawk and coffee house singer-songwriters were all about the previous generation of singer-songwriters who also played coffee houses. But that was about it. Current pop? Pull the other one!
Pat and Greg Kane are brothers from Glasgow and had formed the duo Hue & Cry a couple years' earlier. Like a lot of Scottish acts that tried to brush off the supposed pop naffness of seventies groups like the Bay City Rollers and Silk, they were serious about their craft. Painfully serious. While it wasn't necessarily a rule that Caledonian bands be such humourless tits, the bulk of them were. Some, to their credit, managed to pull it off. I've never been a fan of Simple Minds but I have to admit that their glum approach worked: they did über-serious post-punk that a lot of people to this day rate very highly and they transitioned to stadium rock act without losing a trace of their earnestness. The Blue Nile all wore overcoats and looked like they'd never cracked a smile between them but they did bleak but touching songs.
The 'soulcialist' wing of Scots pop in the eighties, however, seemed buried in their weightiness, when a touch of lightness could have come in handy. Wet Wet Wet were quickly becoming a mammoth act by copying Al Green, a task they were very serious about; they also despised the vast majority of pop in '87. Deacon Blue would prove to be the best Scots group of the year with their excellent debut album Raintown but there was no hiding the fact that they too were low on humour (which makes Ricky Ross' forced chuckle on the single "Loaded" even more inexplicable). Good or bad, these people from Scotland all seemed to be deeply serious while intensely disliking most current pop — and Hue & Cry were right there with them.
A naturally gifted vocalist who could easily have followed the money to lounge singing, Pat Kane was much more rooted in jazz than many of his fellow Scots. He and Greg were talented individuals but much of their material was boring, even if they did have their moments. Their biggest hit, "Labour of Love", tapped into the Red Wedge and anti-Thatcher sentiments of the time and it has a lot more meaning that much of their early material. Like far too many leftist acts of the time, their politics frequently ended up losing out to bland love songs that gave them hits. As with Simply Red and their decent if unremarkable cover of "Money's Too Tight (to Mention)" and the Wets with "Wishing I Was Lucky", the Kane's were at their best when airing their left wing views, something Billy Bragg and The Housemartins never shied from. But why be interesting when you can be doing lame Sinatra pastiche that no one asked for?
Lloyd Cole could have been one of these same earnest Scots. An Englishman, he attended the University of Glasgow in the early eighties right in the midst of the city's post-punk pop boom that produced Altered Images, Aztec Camera and Orange Juice as well as the influential indie label Postcard. These groups were attempting to forge their own sounds and could even be — gasp! — playful in their music and lyrics. Looking like a more well-nourished Morrissey (I'm, of course, talking about Morrissey back in the eighties; he looks like he has enjoyed plenty of vegetarian quiches in more recent years), Cole had the trappings of a guy who wouldn't know a joke if he'd jammed with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band but his songs had wit and the spark of free-thinking individual about them. At a time when anything 'studenty' in pop could be counted on to be sneered at (in contrast to the US where the college rock charts were becoming influential), Lloyd Cole & The Commotions were students who made music for students. They never became a major indie act the way New Order and The Smiths would but they had a loyal following and a generation of British songwriters namecheck Cole as a major influence.
"My Bag" is an engaging record, if not terribly remarkable by the usual standards of the Commotions. Sort of a more-of-the-same record with added bells and whistles to disguise that they were beginning to run out of ideas. As Pat Kane says, the guitars are a departure (as are the 'cha-cha' samples at the beginning, which could have come straight out of a Pet Shop Boys single; the purist Kane's for whatever reason fail to point this out) and could very well have been pinched from groups like Hue & Cry, even if it's just the sort of thing that comes straight out of the Nile Rodgers playbook and had been used on Aztec Camera's superlative 1984 single "All I Need Is Everything". Pat's being facetious, I guess, though since they're normally allergic to any kind of jollity, who's to know?
Though the cult of Cole-Commotion was as loyal as ever, "My Bag" missed the top 40 and the group's subtle creative decline was mirrored by the commercial slide they took with the ironically-titled final album Mainstream. The group would disband in 1989 and Cole would relocate to the US, where he resides to this day. It may have been the fresh environs or having new bandmates to kick ideas around with (or both) but either way the change was good for him as his solo career became much more interesting and his songwriting continued to develop. Meanwhile, Hue & Cry carried on for a bit as a relevant chart act with a level of success comparable to the Commotions before Pat Kane got into journalism. I sure hope he, too, improved upon his craft; maybe he even managed to throw in the odd funny line.
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Bananarama: "Love in the First Degree"
Yet another fantastic Narns single dismissed on the Smash Hits singles review page. At least Dave Rimmer had positive things to say about "Cruel Summer" and "Robert De Niro's Waiting..." (and at least he mentions their name, for the love of god) but all the Kanes are able to do here is bash Stock Aitken Waterman. They're either unaware or don't give a toss that Keren, Sara and Siobahn wrote it with SAW and don't even bother giving consideration to its quality. They hate the record simply for political reasons. I guess that's fair enough but they missed out on some top pop while being all high and mighty. Their stint with Britain's dominant songwriting-production team (I had no idea they were already considered ubiquitous back in '87; I wonder how Pat and Greg felt in '89 when their ever-presence had become nauseating and their records really began to suck) didn't always result in classic singles but "Love in the First Degree" is one of their finest moments. A great song from a three-piece that was about to lose Siobahn to marriage and Shakespears Sister. They'd never be the same again.
