Thompson Twins – Set (Japanese Pressing) Promo

Super Rare Japanese Promo

This album is funky and synthy, somewhere between Girls of Film and Blinded Me With Science and Tears for Fears with some Tones on Tail percussion. It’s fun, with just enough skronking sax to give it some street cred. Those Lion King tribal drums start to feel like a cheat after a while though. Too easy. But this was at the beginning of all that. And … I dunno. Tom Tom Club pulls it off. But here, it sounds just a teeny bit cheap.

One thing I really didn’t grasp in the early 80s during high school was how FUNKY so many of the British bands were. At least when they started out. By 1983-84-85 many of them had been polished and neutered to a glossy poppy nothingness or lilting Caribbean beach resort rhythms. MTV did something bad there: It took club bands that were exciting, and polished and neutered them into pop fluff, then dressed them up in oversized clothes and silly hats which turned it all into a big goofy game of let’s dress up and pretend for tweens.

It’s too bad, because there’s a really exciting club/dance band here on this album that I wish I could go back and see in a crowded club in 1982. This music needs dance and sweat and alcohol, not Spotify at a computer. And it’s waaaaaaay better than their pop crooner stuff from two years later.