Customer Reviews

Desire/No Tears

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This album changed my life back in the 80's. Along with Yello and The Residents, Tuxedomoon were part of Ralph Records' early core of amazing bands. Tuxedomoon are all about texture, humor, existentialism and invention. While slicker than their debut Half-Mute, Desire delves even more deeply into texture and sheer coolness. There are few songs in the annals of modern music to rival the coolness of "In The Name of Talent" or "Desire", nevermind the mind-melting hilarity of "Holiday For Plywood". For anybody with a penchant for the unusual and brilliant, there is nothing like Desire anywhere, and I don't hesitate to recommend it to the musically adventurous. Stands up more than twenty years after its release, and it always will.

The Residents liked these guys enough to sign them to their label, which says something about how truly odd this fringe music sounds. Tuxedomoon combine bread-and-butter pop instruments with a perverse yet perfect blend of violin, saxophone, theremin, clarinet, drum machine, farfisa organ and synthesizers. The lyrics, delivered in a creepy, theatrical tenor-baritone, range from abstract and subtly humorous to downright wacky.

Overall this record has a New Wave feel to it, but there is more than enough of the unknown quotient to keep it from feeling like a nostalgia trip. Desire has fewer instrumentals and stronger melodies than Half Mute (the debut which most people claim to be Tuxedomoon's masterpiece), but no clear hit single like What Use?, which may explain why it's so unjustly underappreciated.

With a few EPs (one of which is included here) and an album behind them, Tuxedomoon confidently met their potential on this strange yet strangely endearing second full length.