Customer Reviews

Clues

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This 1980 Island Records release by the late Robert Palmer may be his best album. There are no bad cuts. You can put it on and enjoy it all the way through. The highlights are "Johnny and Mary," but it helps if your system has good bass response. "I Dream of Wires" is a Gary Numan technopop song. "Woke up Laughing" is a high energy, reggae infused comment on life with a sudden serious ending (just like life itself). "Not a Second Time" is an updated cover of a John Lennon song from the "Meet the Beatles" album. Finally there's "Found You Now," a enchanting love song. I miss Palmer's wonderful voice and influential rock music. This album was his best just before he hit it big on MTV.

"Clues" represented a major departure for Robert Palmer, shifting from his typically island-flavored rock towards harder edged New Wave/Electronica. At the time "Clues" was recorded Palmer was playing on the Talking Head's Remain in Light sessions and was heavily influenced by Gary Numan, and all of them wind up playing on the tracks here. Palmer's chameleonic voice was ideally suited for electronica, ranging from the low rumble demonstrated on "Johnny and Mary" to the falsetto on the title track. There still is a strong island flavor here and there, as on "Woke Up Laughing", but overall keyboards and drum machines dominate as on the Numan-penned track "I Dream of Wires", which rocks harder here than on Numan's original. The hard rock reworking of the Beatles' "Not A Second Time" is nothing short of astonishing; you'd hardly know it was the Beatles as it's stripped down so much and rocked so hard. Standout tracks abound and "Clues" was probably Palmer's best and most consistent album in his lengthy career. Although not thematically organized, the songs are largely about love and longing, and "Clues" is a rollercoaster ride of emotions from the sparse warmth of "Found You Now" to the icily detached couple in "Johnny and Mary", to the future-shock of "I Dream of Wires."

"Clues cemented Palmer's palce in New Wave and he would continue to explore that on 1982's Maybe It's Live and 1983's Pride. More importantly "Clues", like OMD's Architecture & Morality, showed that electronica didn't have to be emotionally distant and removed. Far from it, "Clues" is warm, funny, and very engaging!

This was the one that got me listening to Roberts stuff back in 1979. Since then i've bought everything i can and apart from a couple of tracks i havent been too dissapointed. Looking for clues is a fantastic track with an even better Video

At one time it was rumoured that Robert Palmer wanted to be the new "Thin White Duke", a reference to David Bowie. This is the closest he came. He achieves a sound here that is dynamic, fresh and at the same time referential to traditional rock, blues and dance. It reminds me of David Bowie of the "Station to Station" through the "Let's Dance" period, which is my favorite. Robert was really onto something here, but by the time he hit with "Addicted to Love" and "Simply Irresistable", this kind of musical experimentation was gone. Too bad.

Robert Palmer entered the 80's decade on one of the creative highpoints of his career. It's a very short album-under 30 minutes in fact but so is Bob Dylan's simiarly underrated Nashville Skyline so time has nothing to do with it. Palmer really packed a punch on what time he did have on this album and had a lot of great musical ideas to put. In 1980 there were a whole lot of different genres colliding together during the music industry resession. New wave,post-punk,electronica,fusion,pop and funk were all coming together into new and different combinations and it was artists like Robert Palmer,who didn't have too much of a commercial axe to grind took full advantage. "Looking For Clues" is one of the most successful rhythmic inventions Palmer ever came up with. It's new wave,funk,ska and South African pop all rolled up into one and it was even a hit for him with the inclusion of a clever music video as well. There are some soul rockers here somewhat in the Rolling Stone's style such as "Sulky Girl","What Do You Care","Woke Up Laughing" and a cover of The Beatles "Not A Second Time". These songs also have a somewhat DIY influence in the rhythms that bare something of a resemblance to what Paul McCartney was doing at the same time on his Mccartney II. The main points of interest on this album however are some of the more electro-pop grooves such as "Johnny And Mary". I am not sure if this song was a hit but it was at once typical and prophetic to the nature of the pop in the future in general. "I Dream Of Wires" is more on the progressive new wave side of this album and the same goes for "Found You Now". One of the most interesting points about this album is actually...again it's brevity. Usually an album with this kind of melodic and rhythmic scope usually takes at least 40 minutes to really get on it's way and the songs tend to go on well over five minutes. Since neither of these conditions are met it's proof that rhythms and progressive melodies in pop music aren't necessisarly dependant on extended runs. Again this was an idea that so many in the emmediate future after this latched onto and along with many others pushing the same envelope Robert Palmer was at the very least on something close to the cutting edge of pop at the time.

CLUES is good but not one of Robert Palmer's best. The album did spawn a couple of hits,LOOKING FOR CLUES and JOHNNY AND MARY. There's also a cover of the Lennon-McCartney composition NOT A SECOND TIME which was recorded by the Beatles in or around 1963. Palmer wouldn't have another hit album until THE POWER STATION in 1985. What was Palmer trying to do standing in the ocean with a portable radio and headphones over his ears? I dedicate this to the memory of Palmer who died suddenly of a heart attack on September 26,2003.