There was always something strangely appealing to "The Captain of Her Heart" when this came out in '85. It was right at the height of everything cool about the '80s, and then there would be these occasional outliers that would hit the radio. When Sade hit with "Smooth Operator" I was in the minority of people who couldn't stand the song. Although I suspect this has softened over the years, my initial reaction when I hear her name still isn't positive. At. All.
So it's odd that I clicked with Double, but not really. I had gotten into Michael Franks, starting with Skin Dive in '85, and it wasn't normally the sort of thing I listened to, but it was kind of cool. From there I'd pick up a few of his albums, and really liked The Art of Tea from 1975 and the song "Popsicle Toes," which kind of surprised me, considering my general happy place was rock. Double had some similar elements.
I guess I'm just trying to show that I'm not completely one dimensional, and that despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary I can step outside of my comfort zone and appreciate other styles of music. Which brings me back to Double's Blue. In terms of genres I've never been really good at nailing things into a specific style, although I can often get close. With Double I more or less figured it was adult contemporary with a jazz twist. Apparently this kind of music was dubbed Sophisti-pop. Maybe this sub genre was coined to be a commercially viable back door to success. Like it matters, but it is a cool sounding label that I've only heard of ... once.
Despite a cover that shows four guys, Double was essentially a duo: Kurt Maloo and Felix Haug. They wrote, arranged and performed it all ... except for the parts they didn't. Now I know I mentioned something about contemporary jazz, but it wasn't. There were jazz elements for sure, mixed with new wave, and a lot of electronic instrumentation. There was guitar, and saxophone provided by Christian Ostermeier, one killer trombone solo played by Bob Morgan, and on one song Thomas Jordi provided the bottom end with a fretless bass ... more on the bass later.
Let's address the elephant right off. "The Captain of Her Heart" is a great song and totally holds up, although I was surprised at how thin the song was and how anemic the drum programming sounded, I don't remember it sounding so ... small. Structurally this is a killer song, and the piano parts are so tasty, and the vocals are perfectly suited to the music - it's just a sonic miss.
The rest of the songs are decent enough for what they are, except for "Your Prayer Takes Me Off" which is an insufferable dance loop that sounds like it was inspired by Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" but not in a good way. Despite some cool moments, like the trombone solo on the opening cut, "Woman of the World" I found the production and instrumentation to be lifeless and sterile more often than not. There was no bottom end, and the bass seemed to be done on a synth. For most of the album (trying to give the benefit of the doubt that there was, on occasion, some lower end), the bottom end was practically non-existent.
Enough about the lack of a bottom end. Let's harp on the drums, and yes I know it was the '80s and drummers were no longer needed. With respect to the drum sounds on almost all of the songs (again, the benefit of the doubt), they just seem wrong and out of place. Who knows, maybe there was a real drummer in there and I could be wrong about the machines ... but I don't think so.
The album closes with "Tomorrow," a song that features some absolutely great fretless bass that really comes through and anchors the song (glad I gave this the benefit of the doubt). This song sounds full, and made me sad because it just seemed to highlight what could have been.
Blue is an album that misses more than it hits, and when the album is good, as on "The Captain of Her Heart" and "Tomorrow," it's pretty good. The rest are sort of "meh" and while not unpleasant, except for "Your Prayer Takes Me Off," which was just a misstep, serve to act as generic inoffensive background music that could have only been done in the mid '80s.
Still this was Sophisti-pop and it was about technology and blending genres, and while it didn't all work, it was a game try and it really wasn't like most of what was out there. For that I'll admit it was kind of engaging and interesting, just not all that good.
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