Customer Reviews

Nightflight

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The second to last album from these squawky Welsh birds, finds them in a different mood than on Power Supply. Fewer AC/DCish chords, and better song ideas overall makes it an improvement over it's predecessor (personally, Power Supply has always been my least favorite Budgie album) Lots of huge heavy drums courtesy of Steve williams even though most of the tracks are "lighter" and the heavy ones I find the most dissapointing. Superstar is mere filler, She Used Me up almost hits the mark. The ballad Apparatus gave them a minor hit in the U.K. (one of VERY VERY few!) and opener I Turned To Stone uses a great light-heavy-light-heavy mid paced song structure with a galloping guitar solo laden outro, and is one of my favorite tracks from the 80's era of Budgie. I tip my hat to these batty birds, I can't imagine ever getting really SICK of their music, and I don't blame them for giving up when they did. Things change, music changes, and Budgie just didn't fit the mold of pop music at the time, nor did they ever. Listen, learn, and buy all their damn albums if you don't have them already!

Gone were all the unique qualities that set Budgie apart from other heavy rock acts. Tony Bourge's guitar was the key to the greatness of their early material. Nightflight is just an attempt to get more commercial, with a guitarist that sounded just like everybody else circa 1980. This record is bland, yet still listenable; I understand that things got much worse.

In 1981, Nightflight hit the market following up on two preceding albums which had been good efforts in their own right but nonetheless hinting at a growing void within the group. Whether it was due to the trends in popular music rounding another corner with the infamous new decade or the band's signature potential simply running dry after a steady stream of albums that never quite made it, Budgie's time was nearing a close. Whichever was the case, the critical consensus held regardless that the band's creative strength had been on a downhill slide for several years, an assumption best evidenced by a certain subset of listeners who still favor the band's early 70s catalog over all else. They aren't totally unjustified in their purism either; it can be argued that the final three albums of Budgie's career during the early 80s after being dropped by the A&M label collectively hold only a few truly decent tracks worth remembering, with even the best of those carrying an undercurrent of the kind of inspirational bankruptcy also being experienced by many of the great rock and roll bands rooted in the earlier decades.

However, ennui notwithstanding, Nightflight does function pretty well for the most part as background ambiance. While the musicianship is well versed as usual in tracks like "I Turned to Stone", "Don't Lay Down and Die" and "Superstar", just make sure you don't read too deeply into anything going on lyrically here. Additionally, the songs "Keeping a Rendezvous" and "Apparatus" show a heightened pop sensibility over previous albums, striding a fine line between anthem and ballad convincingly enough to steer things momentarily away from the blunt force assault the band had just recently elected for its new sound a year earlier. After the closing track "Untitled Lullaby" has wound its calming way through one can't help but speculate how much more fluid Nightflight could have been if more numbers of this type were strewn throughout as interludes.

The best Budgie album since "Bandolier", "Nightflight", starts promisingly with one of their best songs "I Turned to Stone". It's a great 6-minute rock track. "Keeping a Rendezvous" is their only chart hit. It's a good song but Budgie has had better songs which should have been hits. "Reaper of the Glory" and "She Used Me Up" are good songs too. In the end there's two songs I'd like to name: "Superstar" and "Change Your Ways" - great songs both musically and lyrically. Other tracks are too simple or boring.
Stars: I Turned to Stone, Keeping a Rendezvous, Superstar

Budgie went for a more pop style on this album, but also mixed in a greater degree of AC/DC style metal, going from a blues/rock band of inconsistent output to an excellent pop band wielding its metal well. The last three tracks fizzle to some degree, but the rest are some of the most imaginative from this band, even if the guitar steps aside to let the song and not the riff create the atmosphere.