Psychomodo [Import, Original recording remastered]

Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 16, 2001)
• Original Release Date: 2001
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import, Original recording remastered
• Label: Bgo - Beat Goes on
• ASIN: B00005JGBK
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,985 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Sweet Dreams

2. Psychomodo

3. Mr. Soft

4. Singular Band

5. Ritz

6. Cavaliers

7. Bed In The Corner

8. Sling It!

9. Tumbling Down

Editorial Reviews

If The Human Menagerie, Cockney Rebel's debut album, was a journey into the bowels of decadent cabaret, The Psychomodo, their second, is like a trip to the circus. Except the clowns were more sickly perverted than clowns normally are, and the fun house was filled with rattlesnakes and spiders. Such twists on innocent childhood imagery have transfixed authors from Ray Bradbury to Stephen King, but Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel were the first band to set that same dread to music, and the only ones to make it work. The Psychomodo was also the band's breakthrough album. The Human Menagerie drew wild reviews and curious sales, but it existed as a cult album even after "Judy Teen" swung out of nowhere to give the band a hit single in spring 1974. Then "Mr Soft" rode his bloodied big top themes into town and Rebelmania erupted. The Psychomodo, still possessing one of the most elegantly threatening jackets of any album ever, had no alternative but to clean up. Harley's themes remained essentially the same as last time out -- fey, fractured alienation; studied, splintered melancholia, and shattered shards of imagery which mean more in the mind than they ever could on paper. Both the swirling "Ritz" and the ponderous "Cavaliers" are little more than litanies of one-liners, pregnant with disconnected symbolism ("blow-job blues and boogaloos"... "morgue-like lips and waitress tips"), but they are mesmerizing nevertheless. Reversing the nature of The Human Menagerie, the crucial songs here are not those extended epics. Rather, it is the paranoid vignette of "Sweet Dreams," surely written in the numbing first light of that precipitous fame; the panicked brainstorm of the title track; and the stuttering, chopping, hysterical nightmare of "Beautiful Dream" (absent from the original LP, but restored as a CD bonus track) which stake out the album's parameters. The hopelessly romantic "Bed in the Corner" opens another door entirely -- relatively straightforward, astoundingly melodic, it was (though nobody realized it at the time) the closest thing in sight to the music Harley would be making later in the decade. Here, however, it swerves in another direction entirely, the dawn of a closing triptych -- completed by "Sling It" and "Tumbling Down" -- which encompasses ten of the most heartstoppingly breathless, and emotionally draining minutes in '70s rock. Indeed, though the latter's final refrain was reduced to pitifully parodic singalong the moment it got out on-stage, on record it retains both its potency and its purpose. "Oh dear!" Harley intones, "look what they've done to the blues." The fact is, he did it all himself -- and people have been trying to undo it ever since. ~ Dave Thompson, All Music Guide

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Steve Harley at his peak of creativity, at age 23!, April 2, 2002

By 

Paul Allaer (Cincinnati) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Psychomodo (Audio CD)

In 1973, Steve Harley and his band Cockney Rebel came out of nowhere with the "glam-rock" image and the superb (and not at all "glam-rock" sounding) single "Sebastian". (The premise of Cockney Rebel was not to use any electric guitars.) In 1974, the band issued its second album, "Psychomodo" and it speaks to the strength of the album that it is now being issued in a remastered version. The sound quality of this CD is impeccable.

The songs on the album are almost all an instant classic, from the opening sounds of "Sweet Dreams", the singles "Psychomodo" and "Mr. Soft", the clever word plays in "Singular Band", the majestic "Ritz", the brooding "Cavaliers", the joyous "Bed in the Corner" and the grand finale in "Tumbling Down". What a collection of songs! I rate the album as such 5 stars.

I have to deduct 1 star from the overall rating, because with a running time of 41 min., it is inexcusable that there are no bonus tracks whatsoever. Where are the singles B-sides? ("Such a Dream", the B-side of "Psychomodo", is one of the best Harley songs ever, and if you ever wondered where NIN got their inspiration for "Closer", look no further than that song!) Where is "Big Big Deal" (the excellent Steve Harley solo-single issued in Fall '74 after this album but before "Best Years of Our Lives")? Where are the live tracks? It's great to have the album remastered, but it's a shame the opportunities of CD capabilities are not fully taken advantage of.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars equal to ziggy stardust and for your pleasure, May 11, 2002

By 

allismile0 "allismile0" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Psychomodo (Audio CD)

You should buy this cd because of the album cover alone (I did). I had no idea what this would sound like. but the album cover was so wonderfully cheasy and strange I thought that there must be something to this guy. I was happily suprised to discover one of my new favorite musicians. Harley was full of style and substance, a very hard thing to do in art because they can represent polar opposites.
This is definitely a glam rock album that ranks with anything that Roxy Music or David Bowie did (except for maybe Ziggy) I guess it depends on your taste.
Pyschomodo goes through a schmorgasboard of musical styles reggae, rock, theatre, and chamber. His lyrics beat Bowie and Ferrys by shear audacity and wit...Telling tales of white gardenia, honkey-tonking all the love that's in ya." (Cavaliers)
The album was produced by Alan Parsons of Dark Side of the Moon fame (as well as being the studio engineer for the Beatles final album Abbey Road). The remastering sound is wonderful and my only complaint would be...the B-sides and live tracks missing from the same time. If you like early David Bowie and Roxy Music, I highly recommend this album; this guy was totally original, and its a shame that I had to stumble across this album and not hear of it as an equal to anything from the glam rock era.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Album!, November 8, 2007

By 

Chuck Potocki (Crown Point, Indiana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Psychomodo (Audio CD)

I became aware of Cockney Rebel by being a huge fan of Bill Nelson & his 70's band, Be-Bop Deluxe. The two bands toured together in 1974, and when Cockney Rebel broke up shortly afterward, two of its' members, bassist Paul Jeffreys & keyboardist Milton Reame-James very briefly were members of Be-Bop Deluxe before Bill Nelson formed the power trio version of the band featured on their 1975 classic "Futurama".

Sorry, I went off on a little tangent there...back to Cockney Rebel!

Cockney Rebel was more or less a vehicle for lead vocalist/songwriter Steve Harley, so much so later on that when all but one of the original members left for Be-Bop Deluxe, Harley reconstituted the group in 1975 under the self-glorifying (Harley called it "more appropriate") moniker of "Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel" as they have been known with numerous personnel changes ever since. Prior to forming CR, Harley was a journalist/critic for several British rock mags & knew the music business inside & out. After CR's initial success in the U.K. with their 1973 classic song "Sebastian", Harley soon developed a bad rep in the music press as a tempermental perfectionist & egomaniac, which was mostly responsible for the acrimonious breakup of the original band.

I bought "Psychomodo" on a whim having never heard any of their music before, and not only did the album cover strike me immediately, so did the music. From the opening orchestral strains of "Psychomodo/Sweet Dreams" to the remarkable grandeur of "Tumbling Down", Harley takes you on a tour into his beautiful but often twisted psyche. Ironically, Harley's self-proclaimed anti-rock & roll/cast the electric guitar into oblivion stance gives way to some of the hardest hitting songs that CR ever produced. Featuring the bizarre "Mr. Soft", "Singular Band", and my personal favorite, the nearly 9-minute epic "Cavaliers", beginning as most of the songs do with orchestral flourishes & featuring a keyboard plugged into a fuzz pedal to replicate the sound of a distorted electric guitar playing the repetitive chord progressions.

The last song on the album is the aforementioned classic "Tumbling Down", which, next to "Sebastian", is the most beautiful & emotive song Harley has ever penned. Once again, the lush orchestration forms the basis of the song, and the catchy outro singalong chorus "Oh dear/look what they've done to the blues" will stick in your head like glue & you'll be singing it for weeks. This CD issue does not include the 2 bonus tracks "Big Big Deal" & "Such A Dream" that a previous reviewer pointed out; these were included on the original British import CD released in 1990. I agree with the reviewer that these songs very much deserved to be included & I too only give this 4 stars because they're absent here. And yes indeed, Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" has "Such A Dream" written all over it; I don't know if Trent Reznor actually used this song as an inspiration or if he unconsciously picked it up, but in any event, the similarities are definitely there!

On a tragic note, original CR bassist Paul Jeffreys & his wife were among the passengers killed on Pan Am Flight 103 which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988. As a tribute, Steve Harley often dedicates "Sebastian" to Jeffreys in concert; this can be heard on the rare import CD "The Great Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel Live", released in 1989 shortly after the tragedy occurred. And yes, the Alan Parsons who produced the album is THE Alan Parsons of Project fame!