“Plastic Punks” is a fun one, reminiscent of early punk/new wave crossover music, with synth sound effects. It starts with an eerie sound, but after the intro it’s got a cool minimalist Devo sort of sound (or, more precisely but more obscurely, a Richard Bone sort of sound). The variety continues with “Hey Allie,” which is a sort of pep talk to the titular woman and has a 60s jangle to it, for the most part, but the synths in the bridge scream new wave. “WannaBe” is the hardest, edgiest track of the album, with gritty synths providing the beat to this song that leans the heaviest into rock and roll and has the least new wave in it. It’s a pretty unique mix of sounds and genres and it works remarkably well. On just the very first track, “Born Losers,” you can hear bouncy power pop, with subtle new wave dance beat that could have come from Kraftwerk, and when the synths get really big I hear the sweeping epic sounds of Vangelis. All of these can be heard in varying ratios throughout the eleven tracks on this, the band’s third LP. I hear the influence of bands as disparate as The Cars, Cheap Trick, Devo, OMD, and even Vangelis. They play music that ranges from the power pop of the late 70s to the new wave of the early and mid 80s, with synth-fueled arrangements alongside guitar, bass, and drums. They'll always have this fantastic pop song and that jolly party with McCartney.AUTOGRAMM – Music That Humans Can Play (Stomp Records, )Īutogramm is a band that spans the North American continent, with members in Seattle, Chicago, and Vancouver. Naked Eyes may not have lasted more than few years, but they burned bright. I heard the song with new ears after becoming a musician myself and began to cower before its creativity. It's one of my points of pride that I listened to that album and this song repeatedly (in between obsessive helpings of Thriller and No Jacket Required). One of the records in my parents' small collection was Naked Eyes, that self-titled 1983 release. The song fades out on that chorus, satisfied this is now The version. Much like a classic Beatles Paul McCartney song, all these invented new touches pack the fairly basic original song with ideas, so that after only 3 minutes there has been a journey. Other versions resort to an awkward upward key change and some soaring strings. No other version has the middle development section like the Naked Eyes version, synth bass running mean scales. It oozes classic MTV bravura.Īll previous versions I heard put the song in a kind of straight lounge beat, while the Naked Eyes version gives us a hustling synth drum shuffle. That whole melody and mix of instrumentation was dreamed up new. In no other version is there anything resembling the instantly recognizable chiming intro. Maybe it was fortuitous they were recreating an impression of the song from memory instead of making a direct transcription. The brilliance of the Naked Eyes version is in that English-accented vocal - and the non-stop invention of great instrumental sounds and melodies. Now I picture the band coming up from that jolly party and thinking, hell, why not do our best "Your Mother Should Know" Paul voice on this? I was going to bring it up even before learning all this about the song. The Paul McCartney tie-in may have been incidental, but it's hard to miss how McCartney-esque the singing melody became on the Naked Eyes version. They returned to the studio to nail the vocal track in a single take. In the midst of tracking their would-be hit, they went downstairs for a spell to attend a party thrown by Paul McCartney. The night they recorded the album version at Abbey Road studios was a good night for Naked Eyes. One song on that demo was "Always Something There to Remind Me." Apparently the group recorded the song fairly spontaneously, getting the lyrics from a friend by phone, then recreating the rest of the song from memory. Burt Bacharach originally wrote the tune, and there is also a manic lounge version of his with all singing melodies converted to brass and strings except for the chorus, when suddenly a handful of female voices shriek "Always something there to remind me!" The song was recorded by many, many artists in the '60s and '70s before the rise of what I consider the definitive version by '80s synthpop duo Naked Eyes.īased on a strong demo tape, Naked Eyes were signed to EMI in 1982 and began work on a debut album. There is an excellent clip available of Johnson performing the song for that kid Dick Clark on American Bandstand. It has a long recording history, first charting for Lou Johnson in 1964. First, I confess I had no idea Naked Eyes was covering this song.
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