Flying Lizards, Fourth Wall

“TV,” the third single, and the only other track to fit the mold of the previous two singles, is an original, but true to the album’s concept, it never resolves or climaxes. The record just trails off with a man saying “I think you’re very. . . very. . . very. . . very. . . very. . . very. . . very. . . very. . . ” If a pop single is three minutes of orgasm, this is four minutes of impotence. If the previous two singles depict an unattainable woman leading you on and attempting to wheedle money and affection out of you with no ultimate payoff, “TV” is what happens when she finally lets you get her and you have no idea what to do with her.

The second side of the LP starts with “Money,” so maybe things are going to pick up and we’ll get the release we want, right? Except that it’s the full version which, after the two and a half minutes, goes into a three-and-a-half minute minimal dub version. . . which then segues into a ten minute long soundscape, “The Flood/Trouble/Events During The Flood.” Sort of like getting “Revolution 9” when you’re expecting to hear “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”

The last cut, “The Window,” is perhaps my favorite cut on the record. Sung by Vivien Goldman, it sounds like the long-lost collaboration between Bjork and Renaldo & The Loaf. It’s still not really a pop song, but it might be about the closest this album ever gets to it. Kinda. If you don’t mind lots of kitchen-pot-and-pan-clanking. Still.

Oddly enough, Fourth Wall, the follow-up to Flying Lizards, was more or less a straight rock album. Well, again, kinda. The singles (“Hands 2 Take,” “Lovers and Other Strangers,” and a cover of “Move On Up” by Curtis Mayfield) are actually a more-or-less accurate picture of the album. A complete departure from the first album, Fourth Wall was wholly written and performed with Patti Paladin. Perhaps it would have done better if it had been released earlier than 1981, maybe 1977 or 1978, given Paladin’s punk-little-girl-style vocals, but then again, it doesn’t really feel like it could have been recorded in ’77. It barely feels like it could be recorded in ’81. It’s a timeless-sounding record; perhaps only the analog sound and use of tape as a tone coloration give it away that it couldn’t be made today, with digital reigning now.

Sadly, the singles didn’t do much on the charts, and the album didn’t sell. Perhaps it was a situation of “Fool me once/Fool me twice,” or maybe it’s that the people who would have appreciated the first album didn’t buy it thinking it’d be another collection of novelties (a similar syndrome that killed The Monkees’ Head), but the best Flying Lizards record seems to have ended up being mostly unheard.

Four years after Fourth Wall, Cunningham revived the Flying Lizards name for the aforementioned Top Ten, which is, while a good record, one of those that’s better for mixtapes than to listen to from stem-to-stern. Each individual song is great (particularly a busted-robot-sounding “Sex Machine,” and a fantastic version of “Suzanne” by Leonard Cohen), but in order, it’s somewhat exhausting and monotonous.

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