1982
5 keepers
keeper avg .500
The fourth album was a breakthrough for the band, at least in the home country. Due to the changing styles at the time the album has a consistently bad case of 80's-itis, as the band discarded their new-wave bar-band roots for a heavier-handed production with Nick Launay. The bone-dry recordings combine Phil Collins's processed percussion, martial intensity (foreshadowing U2's War, released just a few months later), and more artsy touches via The Police into a raw sounding record that can sound jarring and off-putting at times.
On the other hand, the songwriting is fantastic. "Read About It"**** and "US Forces"**** are both ready-made stadium size anthems, and though more subdued, "Short Memory" and "Power and the Passion" are no less solid; the latter was a bafflingly successfully single down under, jumping completely off the rails for nearly a minute of drum solo/drum machine noodling before closing with a rousing theme boasting a 3-piece brass section. The muddled verses of "Tin Legs and Tin Mines"**** pay off handsomely with a massive chorus ("who's running the world today") that's right up there with "na na na nananana, hey Jude" for an audience singalong, and closing track "Somebody's Trying to Tell Me Something"**** ("breaking me down") is intently driving.
Powerful and energetic live versions of several of the album's songs, which appear on the "Scream in Blue" album (1992), may have served to provide a more palatable introduction of this album for me, as the Oils are definitely one of those bands that benefit from the streamlined but symbiotic and spontaneous presentation and more expansive sound of the live setting. Whichever version we're discussing, "Only the Strong"****, a prog-rock level deluge of riffs and transitions that's dizzying though never superfluous, with Peter Garret's maniacally intense delivery, is one of the band's masterpieces. The boxy-sounding studio version of "Scream In Blue" doesn't fare nearly as well, while the brooding, synth-driven opening track "Outside World" is one for the discard pile.
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