Cutting Crew - Broadcast

Cutting Crew were one of those bands whose career trajectory followed Newton's third law - one that has been corrupted and over simplified to: what goes up, must come down. It's not like I'm singling Cutting Crew out for a sophomoric drubbing with cheap innuendo. 

The band was in good company for all that. Heck a couple of years earlier Mr. Mister's Welcome to the Real World (1985) had a couple of absolutely huge radio singles. After all that "success" that band just disappeared. Now the difference between Mr. Mister and Cutting Crew for me is that I had the Mr. Mister album. All I knew of Cutting Crew was the big single, and it was big: "(I Just) Died in Your Arms" and to a lesser extent (because I'd forgotten about it until I listened to the record) the obligatory power ballad (not a lot of power, but a lot of ballad) "I've Been in Love Before" which was pretty good. Who knows why I didn't get the album back in the day, I mean I really liked the single (the one I knew) and this was the kind of slick polished rock with impeccable guitar playing. 

Well I have it now, and the album is really solid. Yeah, it's a tad generic and somewhat faceless at times, but there really aren't any duds (okay there is one, but on balance it's all good). Most of the songs were written by Nick Van Eede who was also the lead singer, and guitarist Kevin Scott MacMichael. While Kevin is a particularly good player, Nick's voice was more limited and while he serviced the songs (after all he wrote them). There were some songs where he killed it, and there were others where I found myself looking at the credits to see if someone else had taken a turn in the vocal booth. Again, this probably reads a little harsher than intended. 

I really did like Broadcast and the first side in particular was one solid song after another. The second side was anchored by the big hit to start things off, but I found some of the songs less memorable - they seemed to lack oomph. I don't know why I found the saxophone fills and accents on a couple of the songs so irritating. Gary Barnacle is a fantastic player ... his contributions just seemed out of place. Particularly on the atmospheric "Sahara" - one of the more artsy fartsy songs. The fretless work by Colin Farley was so tasty but the song just never seemed to coalesce into anything enjoyable (if there was a dud this was it, but I said there weren't any duds so I can't call it a dud). It's also one of the songs were Nick's voice just seemed to be a bit strained. It's probably the only song here I don't enjoy (again not a dud) and frankly I'll give it a pass because the guys were swinging for the fences.

Broadcast would be the band's big album, and while they'd release two more records on Siren / Virgin that by all accounts were pretty decent (I've heard some of the songs, and they were pretty good) the band wasn't commercially viable and they'd find themselves without a major label.

What goes up, must come down ... at least they managed to get up there, even if only for a little while.