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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You Give Me Faron Young...., May 17, 2002
Ah, Prefab's second full-length, and the one many consider to be their best. Me, I find it incredibly difficult to single out "the best" Prefab album; I think this one, "Swoon", "Protest Songs", and "Jordan" are all equally brilliant. This album was actually the first Prefab I ever bought, but it didn't really do it for me the first time, and being the poor college student I was, it didn't take much convincing for me to sell it a month later. I was much more into the jagged edges and white-knuckled jazz-pop of their first effort "Swoon". BUT, one song kept haunting me, wouldn't get out of my head, and I recorded it onto a mix tape before selling back the album. The song, "Bonny", seemed to perfectly embody what makes Paddy McCloon's writing so brilliant. Like Brian Wilson, he can take two relatively simple chords, and shape a song around them in such a way as to achieve something so rich and sublime you'd think he'd have a small orchestra banging away behind him. But no, all he needs is a piano or guitar, a simple and snappy rhythm section, and his voice, to create some of the most melodic, catchy, and harmonically complex music in pop since Brian Wilson's legendary "Smile" sessions. It's like how Wilson's masterpiece tune "Surf's Up" did with one piano what others would need a ten piece ensemble to achieve. The piano part is so harmonically rich that the song doesn't need anything else - it's all covered on the piano. Paddy proves equally adept at this. After a year spent ceaselessly in love with "Bonny" on my mix tape, I decided to take another stab at this one, and it finally clicked. The songs were so deceptively simple, and they had smoothed out all the rough edges and the convoluted song structures from "Swoon", yet still retaind the energy, wit, moodiness, and gossamer beauty. This album is more commercial in sound compared to "Swoon", which is due partly to Thomas Dolby's production, which uses quite a lot of 80s sounding synth sounds, that do sort of date the record. But, the songwriting is so classic, so timeless, that the production is but a minor flaw. And it still conjures a mesmerizing atmosphere, with gossamer sheets of synths hovering through the songs like summer breeze, while jazzy guitar chords skirt around throbbing bass-lines and tight as a duck's butt drumming. From the country shuffle of the opening track "Faron Young", to the driving "Appetite" and "Moving the River", to the late-night, cocktail-jazz of "Horsin' Around" and "Halleluja", and the moody, dramatic build-ups of "When Love Breaks Down" and "Goodbye Lucille #1", one finds a frightening level of melodic consistency. And the lyrics, though occcasionally bordering on sentimental, usually contain insightful and sometimes biting poetic visions that prove Paddy pays a lot of attention to his surroundings. Sophisticated, accomplished, yet so simple, the elements are so basic, the songs sound like they were put together so effortlessly, that only a true genius could pull something like this off. Like James Joyce, Paddy McCloon used to boast of his brilliance, and was even once quoted as saying, "on my day, who are my rivals?". And, yup, like with James Joyce, that kind of open arrogance can be cringe-inducing, but the scary thing is, he's absolutely right.
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~ Prefab Sprout
~ Prefab Sprout
~ Prefab Sprout
~ Prefab Sprout
~ Prefab Sprout
by Prefab Sprout 
