Duran Duran: Seven and the Ragged Tiger

Duran Duran: Seven and the Ragged Tiger

1983

Capital Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. The Reflex  2. New Moon on Monday  3. (I'm Looking For) Cracks in the Pavement  4. I Take the Dice  5. Of Crime and Passion  6. Union of the Snake  7. Shadows on Your Side  8. Tiger Tiger  9. The Seventh Stranger



Seven and the Ragged Tiger...Grrrrowwwwlll....This is definitely one of those post-superstardom albums...Where everything is suddenly bigger, gaudier, not as good, yet super awesome...Pumped up to arena levels...Bright, sudden splashes of neon paint thrown on every surface...

They sound like they're somewhat torn between two different directions...The album alternates between music that's much more dance oriented than what came before (See "Union of the Snake" and "The Reflex" (BTW, the version of "The Reflex" on the album is much more listenable than the version I'm used to hearing on the radio...I didn't think I cared for the song until I heard the album cut of it...Much less gaudy...)).

 The other direction they seem to be going for is straight-up Roxy Music worship...Check out "(I'm Looking For) Cracks in the Pavement " and the verses on "New Moon on Monday" for the band at their Roxy-est..."New Moon" shows the band  proving they could still do the "slick new wave pop" thing by tossing off what is probably their best example of the form (outside of "Hungry Like the Wolf")....Geezus, that chorus is massive...

The only track I don't care for is "Tiger Tiger" which sees the band returning to the murk of their debut album, but they're just no longer good at it...Oh, man that fretless bass is so obnoxious...The one moment they should have dropped the pageantry and went for a more understated approach...The very definition of a "Skipper" track...Skip, skip, skip...

...aaaaand this is pretty much as far as I go into the Duran Duran studio album discography...I think this is the last moment of magic (but we'll get to that in the next coupla posts)...The band was still on top and you barely notice that this isn't quite as good as the two albums that preceded it...But again the spectacle is so great and there's some stellar stuff on here...

Here's "New Moon on Monday" by Duran Duran...