rendezvous wrote:
….. I find Manifesto, overall, an emotionally "cold" album, the title track and Spin Me Round are stunning.
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Frantic Fandangoists,
Rendezvous a raison. “Emotionally cold” is a good descriptor.
W2 always found our hero to be a conservative artist in both his Roxy & solo guises insomuch as, although highly creative and innovative, he tends to take things in steps.
Wether that is done consciously because he wants to take his audience with him or subconsciously because that’s just the way he is - is an open question ?
No poster on this thread has disputed that the parts are greater than the total or that this was a transition album. Windswept thinks that it’s this that lies at the heart of its relative dysfunctional nature.
Of course steps were taken to smooth this transition - hence the East Side / West Side malarkey.
They had been in the wilderness for four years and now they were back in the studio they wanted to go somewhere else but didn’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water. Hence them using ‘Manifesto’ as a stepping stone but it was at a cost of a coherent emotion which did make it a little cold.
The direction became much clearer and the warmth returned with ‘Flesh & Blood’ and when ‘Avalon’ came, the new emotion was off the Richter scale !
We await the biography for further clarification.
Salutations,
W2