By the time of their fourth album - Perhaps - The Associates were basically the late, great, Billy Mackenzie. Now I'll admit Billy Mackenzie's voice can be a bit if a 'marmite' experience. Prone to the most extravagant wailing, falsetto and mannered vocal stylings the mid 1980's could bequeath you. He had a truly fabulous high tenor voice, but gosh did you know it, slapping you repeatedly around the head with both its brilliance and its baroquely aberrant embellishments.
'Perhaps' - as an album, is an admirable stab at making the classic pop album. Jammed full with catchy tunes, piano riffs and lush orchestration. But there was always an experimental pulse to The Associates music, a much bleaker, mordant fin del siecle European vibe. Add to that the showy flaunting of histrionic vocal prowess, and this proved far too much for wider popular acclaim to comfortably hold. Less is More was rarely a philosophy he paid much heed too. Billy never cared that much about whether what he did was commercial or not, either
However, on this track 'Breakfast' we have a truly gorgeous yet tender little song, combined with an unusually restrained velvety vocal performance from Mackenzie. This track re-emerged into my memory after a recent first hearing of Kylie's Confide In Me. The crowning musical achievement from her 'ironic sex kitten' phase. Remarkable in her back catalogue for its ominous sense of melancholy, a darker seedier world weary edge, and the style of orchestration and a chord sequence that bore echoes for me of The Associates in 1985.
Both tracks are currently being regularly spun on my daily playlist.
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