Customer Reviews

Psychomodo

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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!

THE ULTIMATE PARTY ALBUM !!!

Steve Harley has always been a 11 star songwriter, but 5 stars is the max on the meter!!

I bought this album when it was released in 1975 & now on CD. Released in an era when bands acually wrote & recored "real" music, however you will never hear it played on the so-called "oldies" stations.

The musicianship & songwriting content contained within is Very original, inovative, fresh, lively & I have yet to hear anything it's rival.

It is just one of those "must have" recordings you will keep in your collection.

The music on this recording is NEVER DATED as is the case with so many others.

Toss this one in the player at your next party & watch as the complements come in!!

What ever you do-Get it from Amazon-nice people, nice prices!!

I PULLED OUT THE VINYL OF ONE OF MY OLD FAVORITE RECORDS, THE PSYCHOMODO. HAVING NOT HEARD IT IN 10-15 YEARS I WAS REALLY IN FOR A TREAT. NOT ONLY HAS THIS ALBUM WITHSTOOD THE "TEST OF TIME" IT APPEARS TO HAVE GOTTEN BETTER! THE NUANCE OF HARLEY'S VOICE AND VARIETY OF INSTRUMENTATION AND TEXTURES IN THESE SONGS IS ASTOUNDING. WORDS CANNOT DO JUSTICE TO THE MAJESTY OF THIS MUSIC. BUY IT!!!! STEAL IT!!! SLING IT!!! WING IT AND DO IT AGAIN!!!

This album is a masterpiece. Cockney Rebel's first three albums, the Human Menagerie, Psychomodo and the Best Years of Our Lives are amongst the best of the seventies. Neither Roxy Music nor Bowie ever released anything as strangely pure and weird as this.
I don't think most people are going to get it.

Get this one and Best Years of Our Lives and you have Harley at his finest. Then buy the rest of the LP's and you have some of the best songs ever written. I'm biased, but hey I own 1,000 + CD's and these guys are real top drawer

Update September 17, 2011

What a spectacular album. My original review didn't cover just how special it is so here's an updated one.

"Cavaliers" is my favorite song from Psychomodo. Maybe it's just me, but it really seems like Led Zeppelin was listening to that guitar riff when they created "In the Light" from their Physical Graffiti album. The Zeppelin riff seems less creative though. The lyrics seem to cover a wide variety of subjects, the lead singer resembles either Ian Hunter from Mott the Hoople fame or Elvis Costello (except neither one of these artists is capable of displaying as much as emotion as Steve Harley- at least, what I've heard of them so far leads me to believe they can't) and the harmonica gives the song a slight Dylan-esque feeling.

Overall however, these comparisons aren't exactly what makes "Cavaliers" so great. The song can stand solid ground on its own quite well. It's *still* some of the most creative glam rock I've ever heard (if even calling it glam rock is acceptable).

"Ritz" is the second longest track here and what strikes me about it the most is the mysteriously tripped out way the lead singer delivers his lines. I've never heard anything quite like it before. Perhaps it's a couple minutes overlong but then again, the lyrics are quite unique in their own way and I really wouldn't want to do away with any of the creative words being sung. No way, haha.

"Tumbling Down" is a strange ballad of sorts- perhaps the only reason it's strange is because it doesn't feel like it belongs on the same album as "Ritz" and "Cavaliers". It's too normal, haha. I love it though. What a strange pair Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel made on this album (and the previous one titled the Human Menagerie which by the way sounds nothing at ALL like this one). Anyway the piano lines and the short moments of flute bursts are quite beautiful. I like how the song gets orchestrated near the end with a background chorus chanting along with the lead singer. Just to further give off a feeling of majestic beauty I suppose.

About the only time you do experience typical glam rock happens to be the first two songs, perhaps the worst place to put normal glam rockers on an album that's anything but typical. You'd never know if you stopped listening after track two, however. How unfortunate if people stopped listening after the title song and just assumed it was nothing special.

Anyway "Sweet Dreams" and the title song are glam rock at its most basic and predictable. Good enough vocal melodies though- no doubt about that. "Mr. Soft" is a lot like a Jeff Lynne/Electric Light Orchestra song and "Singular Band" bares a striking resemblance to the Kinks and perhaps "Apeman". "Bed in the Corner" is... hoedown rock with violins? Seriously? Yuppers! And the transition into the much heavier "Sling It!" is a flawless one.

This is a highly enjoyable album. The vocals are mysterious and filled with a ton of personality while other times Steve can be incredibly emotional, but either way he's completely great the entire time. Songwriting that honestly doesn't get any more underrated than this. An album I highly recommend and one that definitely slipped through the cracks somewhere along the line because it's honestly too memorable to simply vanish away like it has.

BUT, I don't think this album can be compared with Roxy Music or other glam rock bands because the Psychomodo doesn't really sound like any other album I've heard. Oh sure, the lead singer sounds like the guy from Mott the Hoople, but that's where the similarities end. Great album.

As I stated in one of the comments of another review, I can't believe I did not discover this band until recently. It's been omitted so terrible from the lists of fantastic rock bands for so long, I feel cheated! I won't say I don't see why, it's not obviously marketable, it's unusual and it's not the easiest band to categorize. It's usually crammed in between prog-rock and glam and whatever else was floating about in the 70s, but totally its own beautiful fierce monster. It is chocked full of easy to relate to emotional content and just flat out, beautiful, fun, enjoyable music.

Specific to this album, I want to say what a world of sound and emotion it builds around you as it unfolds. At times romantic, (Bed in The Corner), cynically playful, (Mr.Soft, Psychomodo), totally bizarre, (Sweet Dreams), or gorgeous and awesome in the traditional, epic sense, (Tumbling Down, Ritz, Cavaliers) It's a world I never want to leave. Especially cavaliers, which even at a slightly repetitive 7 minutes is more like a enrapturing spell than a bore.

I wish I could speak more to the sort of music it is, but I'm not a musician and others have covered it far better. I just want to tell the world about how unique and magical this band is, and this album is some of the most potent stuff.

This was the record that really open my mind to Bowie, VU and the like - I thought. I listened to it rabidly, read every nuance in Harley's voice, revelled in the music. And while the songs remain largely excellent, this record has not aged well.

While Roxy Music's debut has maintained a voice, a tonality, a strength and a relevance, this record has turned into a pale imitation of that disc. Which, in hindsight, is what it always was, from the opening swell onward. I didn't give Roxy the proper credit for allowing me to listen to other music with an open mind... now I do.