Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Buy another Madness Album, March 16, 2008
Madness was one of the great bands. All fake rock- type bands that kids today listen to... have stolen everything that they emulate but aren't from bands like this . Madness is a classic. This is not the greatest, may be the worst that they have released. But, Buy it for Your kids... Because it is strides better than the derivations that they are buying into. Well, no... Buy them Complete Madness or something and just blow them away with what a real band sounds like
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Nutty Boys Grow Up, May 24, 2007
I recall when this album came out, and how the critics loved it, but the public hated it. Well, the public were wrong- this is a great record. Listening to it after 20 years away from it makes me realize that this is probably the best thing they ever did. I've been listening to it constantly on my CD player, and I keep coming back to it again and again.
But it's not a Madness record, but rather a record of the remaining six members of Madness trying to find a comfortable successful musical identity without their seventh member, classically-trained keyboardist and composer Mike Barson, who left before this album was made. He had started the band in 1976, and his loss left a huge hole which the remaining members of this close-knit outfit felt they never recovered from musically or probably even psychologically.
They really feel in this music, as if they miss him lyrically and musically in the record, but in so doing, they create beautiful music and lyrics. They had all (and I do mean all in the band) by this time become adept at writing pop masterpieces, but were not used to doing it without Barson's inspiration and goading. Barson was and is a forceful figure in the band's chemistry, and his shoes were difficult to fill.
What is the music? Beautiful, but not a Madness fun-house type album. It exudes happiness and nostalgia, tinged with frustration, cynicism, and resentment at Barson's leaving (Mad Not Mad) and at Thatcherite Britain (Burning the Boats), ambivalence at dealing with pervasive American culture (Uncle Sam), the dirtiness of the music business treadmill (I'll Compete), but their are some brilliantly tender moments too, such as Cathal Smyth's turn at the lead vocals on Tears You Can't Hide.
Scritti Politti's Sweetest Girl gets a clever cover arrangement here, probably too clever by half. I think the boys were trying too hard to show they could do it without Mike Barson, and the synthesizers employed on most of the tunes could have become too overbearing in the hands of a different production team.
All in all, the record shows Madness growing up, but not quite sure what they were becoming, and how they were now paying their dues belatedly. Madness started out very successfully with their first single The Prince in 1979, and never looked back at a string of Top 10 and Top 20 hits, unbroken until Uncle Sam, which never made it past #22 or so. It had all become too easy for them, and when it became difficult and no longer automatic, they found the going tough.
They had also been touring almost non-stop, while the members began to cultivate family lives and outside interests, and the tension of all of it became too much for these young men. Once they realized what they had, and how to handle it (and how much the public missed them) they reformed, with Barson back on board, in the 1990s and have kept going until this day.
The band, esp. Suggs, regard this album as little more than a "polished turd", but they couldn't be more wrong. This is a timeless document of an era, with music and lyrics that still sound timely today.
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1.0 out of 5 stars
Better than I remembered, October 1, 2001
Have to change my review after buying this. This is a pretty decent musical adventure from Madness. I'll Compete is the best most exciting song but others are good also. "Sweetest Girl" has grown on me tremendously. All in all a pretty worthy c.d.
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is Madness' 
