As a kid I was a huge Missing Persons fan. I bought ‘Spring Session M’ on vinyl and was as an early teen secretly a bit in love with Dale Bozzio… but that’s another story.
If you’re gonna cover iconic songs you either need to enhance or re0magine and on this new Missing persons album its very much a case of the latter with “California Dreaming’ completely stripped back to the bones and given a stark Gothic sheen and snails pace.
The first of three originals here: ‘Lipstick’ is a dark tale and a little mournful too as it relates a tale of lost dreams through a nice snatch of early 80’s electronica. It’s like stepping back in time. And second original ‘Dreaming’ itself is all emerges from the electronic bubbles clean and stark like New Order for the new millennium.
Sometimes tough you have to be aware of an original to appreciate a cover and sometimes they don’t quite click and the best examples here are the next two tracks: ‘We Gotta Get Out of This Place’ made popular by The Animals back in the 60’s is slowed to a similar crawl to the opener and just doesn’t take it’s chances.It’s the sort of song that needs emotion rather than electronic effects and it doesn’t seem to draw a breath from first note to last. Conversely the Jagger/Richards composition ‘Play With Fire’ sounds fresh and compelling and one that is a real vindication of the treatment.
Sadly ‘Just What I Needed’ doesn’t do it for me either it seems over-cooked and whilst the instrumental industrial vibe of the chorus is a nice idea I still felt like it was largely unresolved at the end of this one.
After that heavier interlude the programming for ‘This is the Day’ a song I’ve never heard before is pure early 80’s ‘Electro Pop’ and nice enough especially if you love those retro sounds.
I do and always have firmly believed that ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ by the maudlin and depressing Joy Division is one of the most over-hyped and insubstantial yet gloriously over-lauded songs ever written. It hit the heights of number 13 in the UK charts and to be honest I’ve never heard anything in it to suggest that it is anything more than a relatively obscure song by a relatively obscure band that has a decent hook. Here with voice and drums and spacey keyboards slowed down to that crawl again I’m still ambivalent.
‘Images of Heaven’ is a nice slice of electronica and the cover of ‘Incense and Peppermints’ (for once not slowed down) works well maybe because of the energy. ‘This Time’ may even be the best of the originals here too.
The final word goes to a cover of The Dramatics early 70’s Soul single ‘In the Rain’ it’s probably the best executed cover here and one that retains the spirit of the original song rather than stripping and retro-fitting it.
One for electronica fans.
