The Damned: Anything

The Damned: Anything

1986

MCA Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Anything  2. Alone Again Or  3. The Portrait  4. Restless  5. In Dulce Decorum  6. Gigolo  7. The Girl Goes Down  8. Tightrope Walk   9. Psychomania



The vinyl copy I have now has the cover as shown above, but in my teen years I had the cassette of this release, and the cover was in color...

This tape was in heavy, heavy rotation growing up...I rescued it from a dollar tape bin at a Camelot music somewhere in the 90's and listened to it religiously...I remember the cassette itself looked weird...It was a black tape with a big, papery, silver label...You can see the cassette in this super red photo I snatched from ebay...

It's probably worth a mention  there was an album inbetween "Strawberries" and "Anything" called "Phantasmagoria"  where the band lost Captain Sensible and stepped away from punk in favor of gothier pastures..They managed to hold on to their trademark humor, so the transition ended up not being as jarring as expected...That cover is goth as fuck, though...



"Anything" continues in the goth style, but adds a bit more hard rock to the mix...This is kind of a difficult one for me to talk about, because I have a huge nostalgic connection to it, but there's no way I could ever recommend it to anybody with a clear conscience... There's no denying that it's probably the band's worst album (to be fair I've never heard "Not of This Earth" or "So, Who's Paranoid?") ...

It all starts out well enough...Although. it is a little jarring when you first hear the title track and you think for a couple seconds that you might have accidentally put on a Simple Minds record...Wordless, soulful whoo-hoooahhh-ahhh-ahhhhs...But it straightens itself out and thunders along quite nicely, as long as you're not too hung up on the cavernous 80's production...Then there's a beautiful cover of Love's psychedelic spaghetti-western masterpiece "Alone Again Or" which smokes everything else on the album...But just when you've settled in for another classic album, the dramatic, meandering piano instrumental "The Portrait" comes on and kills all momentum...It always reminds me of the type of over-wrought backing they'd play during a dramatic scene in a soap opera...

"♪da da din dinnnnnnnn.....♪"

"Dammit, Victoria! You know I only killed your Father in self-defense..."

"♪da da din dinnnnnnnn.....♪"

"Dammit, Victoria, I know I sold our baby to the Gypsies, but how long must I keep paying for that one mistake?"

"♪da da din dinnnnnnnn.....♪"

 "Dammit, Victoria, you know  I wouldn't have eaten that Pepperidge Farm cookie if I had known it was the last one..."

"♪da da din dinnnnnnnn.....♪"

You get the point...And then "Restless" comes on and pounds around a bit but nothing much happens...It's pretty bad to have this much filler in a record that only has nine songs on it...I've always loved "In Dulce Decorum," though...Just a beautiful, chiming popper with a lovely melody, and even though Captain Sensible was no longer a member, I swear I can hear his melodic spirit in this song...I think the band was in desperate of his winning pop hooks at this point...

 "Gigolo" is just a bundle of borrowed material...The chorus is seriously word-for-word "Gigolo Aunt" by Syd Barrett and the break swipes the melody and some of the lyrics from Robyn Hitchcock's "My Wife and My Dead Wife"...What the hell?!  Oh well, at least it's catchy as hell...Still it's astounding that Barrett and Hitchcock didn't get songwriting credits for this...

Oddly enough, I think one of the best moments on the album is the bombastic synth-orchestra on "Tightrope Walk," which manages some tense drama... Dave Vanian sounds remarkably at home here, despite it being miles away from their original punk & roll style...The album ends with "Psychomania" which has somehow become a favorite among fans, but it's doesn't knock me out or anything...Decent enough energy but the chorus seems kinda phoned-in...That didn't stop me from walking around all day singing it, though...

So yea, I cannot recommend this album to anyone except for myself and maybe undiscerning goths with a sweet tooth for pop..Beautiful cover though...

You've got to check out "Alone Again Or." though...It's absolutely amazing...Have a good listen!...