Music Review: Blancmange, Semi Detached

By Jeffery X Martin

Blancmange’s fifth album, Semi Detached, is the first one recorded without core member Stephen Luscombe. Remaining founder Neil Arthur has taken the opportunity to revitalize the Blancmange brand name by taking the music on a gleeful trip to hell. It’s also one of the purest synth-pop albums in years, with electric guitar mainly layered in for texture.

The tunes are dense, thick piles of old Eighties synth tones and new sounds bordering on dubstep. It’s an uneasy mixture at times, but Arthur has the balls to bring it off, if only by being consistently inconsistent. He also has the temerity to cover a song by Krautrock legends, Can. Blancmange’s version of “I Want More” is a prime example of monotone pop; the vocals are delivered without emotion, while the music slingshots about the channels like a tornado in a valley. This tune deserves a few remixes and heavy club play.

The opening tune, “The Fall,” is an eight-minute long ode to panning from left to right. The story is simple: you don’t love me anymore, so I’m going to go home and listen to music by myself. In this case, the music is by the band, The Fall. Hell, I’ve listened to The Fall in times of need, especially their album, The Frenz Experiment. Who hasn’t? Well, I’ll speak for myself. [Seriously, though. Listen to The Fall.]

While Arthur is in anachronism mode musically, he’s in Stage Two of the grieving process lyrically. This is some angry synth-pop. The song, “It Didn’t Take Long,” tells someone that he will be over them in less time than it would take to listen to the song. That’s less than five minutes, if you’re keeping score. He also sings, “I’m not sorry I hurt you.” We have gone way past the “up the bloody tree” phase of old.

The only real misstep on the album is “Deep in the Mine,” which has some nice ideas that get totally drowned by overproduction. A stripped down version of this would be excellent. As it stands, it suffers from extreme over-twiddling.

“Acid” and “Useless” both incorporate Arthur’s trademark wordplay to get their points across. “Acid” features electronic drum tones not heard since Donna Summer’s heyday combined with the familiar Blancmange Middle Eastern influence. “Useless” revolves around a nursery rhyme scheme and the line, “Everybody loves you/Useless as you are.” That’s a lot of venom, and you can jump double Dutch to it.

The closer is a happy little ditty called “Bloody Hell Fire.” If the rest of the album is good, this song is bloody brilliant. It’s darker than anything Blancmange has ever done before. Arthur snarls, “Jesus Christ, never mind you/I don’t know if I exist.” This song feels like years of pent-up aggression and angst, ejected all at once, bordering on a catharsis for both singer and listener.

Blancmange was formed in 1979. They’ve put out five albums in 36 years. That’s not a lot of output from a synth-pop band but Neil Arthur, at age 57, seems to have finally found his inner punk. Whatever Blancmange is on its way to becoming, if Semi Detached is any indication, it’s going to be amazing.

Semi Detached was released through Cherry Red Records on March 23.