2 keepers
keeper avg .200
Coming fifteen years after their last album, "Strange Times" (1986), The Chameleons' final album seems to pick up where the band left off, with a couple tweaks. Like their debut album, "Why Call It Anything" begins in rip-roaring fashion with "Shades"**** ("pull the shades and grey together"). It's not too far off from their previous albums, but shoegaze bands like Ride had been quite the thing in The Chameleons' absence, and the shoegaze influence of their melodic howl is apparent. Back in the 80's they beat U2 to that expansive, atmospheric guitar sound, but "Indiana" still doesn't sound too much further along, and "Lufthansa" reminds me of a slow Echo and the Bunnymen. These are all perfectly listenable songs but do we see a trend here? The mid-tempo "Anyone Alive?" and the unhurried "All Around" both sound most like The Verve, and that's the streamlined Verve of a couple albums in.
Their greatest successes this time around are the outliers. The gothic murk of "Swamp Thing" and U2's arena rock collide on the split-personality "Truth Isn't Truth Anymore," which recedes to an unsettling wail. The reggae / trip-hoppy "Miracles and Wonders"**** sounds like nothing else by The Chameleons or anyone else in the genre. Featuring additional vocals and percussion by Kwasi Asante, it fades into an atmospheric soundscape coda punctuated with spectral chanted shouts. I know this was 18 years into their career and they're all grown up, but at least half of the album is too much on the slow side. Bringing all my points full-circle, "Are You Still There?" is another new age-y instrumental, resembling new age funeral background music or more specifically Angelo Badalamenti's "Laura Palmer's Theme" (much the same way they ended their first two albums).
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