Customer Reviews

I Trawl the Megahertz

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Being a Prefab Sprout fan I'm partial to anything the great Paddy Mcaloon would do. However, this suite of songs, almost brought tears to my eyes. Here are some of the most thoughtful and beautiful chamber orchestra arrangements with spoken word and radio snippets and sound waves. Paddy may have lost most of his sight, but his heart and spirit remain unique, stellar, crystal, sweeter astral vista baby!

For me, a Prefab Sprout fan, it took repeated listenings over a year to appreciate the instrumental tracks. I was skeptical. It really requires the patient, attentive, analytical mode that one would use for classical music. It's not a Prefab Sprout album, it's not really pop music, so immediate gratification is not what you should expect. I'm writing this because at first I couldn't find the emotional content- but in the end, it's there, the same soul that we know and love from Prefab Sprout, expressed in a fuller, more complex way.

I find Prefab Sprout a little bit boring at times, although I recognize McAloon's tremendous talent as a songwriter. Prefab Sprout and McAloon's singing in particular just sound too anemic to me. Maybe the latter is why I like this album a lot, since it's mostly instrumental.

Because this solo effort is a different story. It balances perfectly between the pretentious/hackneyed and the honest, deep-felt and believable musical expression it actually is. It is truly a cinematic experience, but unlike many scores it doesn't end up tedious or boring. Symphonic chamber-pop, beautifully melancholic.

If you like to listen to Air, Tindersticks, Scott Walker, Lamb Chop and old lounge lizards like Martin Denny, this is definitely something for you. It bears quite a few similarities to Davis/Evans "Sketches of Spain" and "Porgy and Bess" too, but by far much more on the upbeat and poppy side.

Perfect soundtrack to hot and sunny summer days.

(A small wish that someone reads this review to Mr. McAloon.) "I Trawl the Megaherz" is simply wondeful and the title song is a masterpiece track. Those 20 minutes are a work of art on par with the masters of modern music and, after close to 100 hearings, I am amazed by it every time I experience it. Yes, the other tracks are not at the same level but they are still pearls around one great diamond. It is no more and no less than an album to record, experience, and then save for when your children are old enough to understand it.

This CD is a very recent discovery for me - picked it up cheap in a bargain bin.

I remembered reading favourable reviews of this when it first came out and took my chances.

This is quite simply one of the best CDS I have heard in a very long time.

Being a lapsed fan of Prefab Sprout, I would have been open to Mr McAloon's adventures but nothing prepared me for the magnificent beauty of this music.

If you liked Prefab Sprout - buy this CD and rediscover the genius of Paddy McAloon.

if you know nothing about Prefab Sprout - but this CD and treat yourself to some of the most beautiful and moving music you are likely to hear for a long time.

What reviewer Mr. Graham said is true. I can't add much. This is not a Prefab Sprout record. The charms of this CD -- and there are many -- are very slow to reveal to themselves. If you're expecting catchy pop music such as "Life of Surprises" or "Appetite," you'll be wondering "what the ----?" for the first several listens. And then, all of the sudden, you'll have this craving to listen to this record over and over and over again.

The instrumentals are quite good, but two voiced tracks stand out. The 22-minute opener, the title track, is an artfully interwoven series of dream fragments, spoken as a narrative over a mournful arrangement of strings and brass. What's it about? What's any disjointed dream about? Also worth noting is "i'm 49," released on record when Mr. McAloon was 46, so it ain't autobiographical, that's for sure. While it's another excellent spoken-word meditation of divorce and loss (and much more), it is nothing like the title track. Brief. Uplifting backing track. Unlike the theatrical reading of the former's words, this one sounds as if it is a series of found-voices discussing this subject with clinical detachment.

This is a very haunting and memorable record.

This may be the best CD I've bought in years. Yes I bought it because of prefab sprout, but that turns out to be a happy piece of serendipity as this is nothing like a prefab sprout album.
It is just standout brillian

I don't pretend to know what Paddy McAloon's life has been like in recent years; I can say that I Trawl the Megahertz has found him, musically, in fine form. From the opening (title) track, with its found poem narrative (from a guest female vocalist), to the rest of the mostly instrumental album (Paddy only sings on "Sleeping Rough" - an apparent nod to Rip Van Winkle), McAloon has dipped back into his love for early 20th Century American pop music; a modern marriage of his polished style with Gil Evans-era Miles Davis.

I cannot tell prospective shoppers of all things Prefab Sprout or McAloon how immensely pleased I was to immerse myself in this album, I a long-time fan of the Sprouts. I was one of those who relished the marriage between intense pop melody and lyrical as well as instrumental rawness that had made their "Lions In My Own Garden (Exit Someone)" single and "Swoon," their first album, so magnificent. To me, "Swoon" remains the finest Prefab Sprout album two decades later. With the critics excessively praising their next album, the overproduced musically less original in my opinion "Steve McQueen" (called "Two Wheels Good" in the States), the Sprouts were given permission to produce a long line of gushy and essentially meaningless pop ditties (the most offending of which were found on the "From Langley Park to Memphis" album). The second most accomplished Prefab Sprout album was "Jordan: The Comeback." But where was McAloon to go after these accomplishments? With "I Trawl the Megahertz" McAloon started to reinvent himself, and I am ecstatically silly he did!

This is a magnificent album, musically accomplished, gorgeous melodies, beautifully played by a small semi-classical ensemble, the words (spoken and sung on only a few titles) seemingly random but very personal reflections of life in our cold and neurotic industrial landscape. One can feel the pain that led McAloon to produce this - who knows from what: broken relationships, his detached retina condition that left him close to blind three years ago and as a result an avid short-wave radio listener, or other existential malaise? - one leaves this album in a similar emotional turmoil, revived by the power of music, art, love and human courage. I have rarely felt so reconnected to this very talented musician as through his latest album. I was hoping throughout the past 20 years that he would tackle new topics and in novel ways. I hope this is the beginning of another string of inventiveness as McAloon continues to experiment in new musical forms, and starts to write more powerfully about the crazy and alienating world we live in. Paddy has been openly reluctant in past interviews going back to the 1980s to be expressly political, perhaps fearing preachiness. And yet, with a talent as enormous as his, if only he got more daring in exploring social topics lyrically married to his gorgeous melodies, others could be profoundly moved to change, such are his artistic talents, sometimes realized, often muddied by his fascination with a drippy love song. With "I Trawl The Megahertz," McAloon has moved away from repeating McCartney's post-Beatles meaningless gushiness ("Silly Love Songs") and is using his talent to attack new challenges. I profoundly hope this is only the beginning. I cannot recommend this mostly instrumental album more highly! In a weird way, as good or even better than anything Sprout, and that is saying a great deal considering the masterpieces he created in it.

Lovely, lovely, lovley. Perhaps his finest work.