Prefab Sprout / Steve McQueen (remastered and expanded 2-CD edition) Æàíð: Alternative/Indie Rock, Sophisti-Pop Íîñèòåëü: CD Ñòðàíà-ïðîèçâîäèòåëü äèñêà (ðåëèçà): EU Ãîä èçäàíèÿ: 2007 (1985) Èçäàòåëü (ëåéáë): Sony BMG Music Íîìåð ïî êàòàëîãó: 88697072442 KWCD3-25 Ñòðàíà èñïîëíèòåëÿ (ãðóïïû): UK Àóäèîêîäåê: FLAC (*.flac) Òèï ðèïà: tracks+.cue Ïðîäîëæèòåëüíîñòü: 00:45:11 + 00:34:59 = 01:20:10 Èñòî÷íèê: ñîáñòâåííûé ðèï Íàëè÷èå ñêàíîâ â ñîäåðæèìîì ðàçäà÷è: äà
Òðåêëèñò
Disc One: Original Album remastered by Thomas Dolby (00:45:11)
01. Faron Young 03:43
02. Bonny 03:47
03. Appetite 03:59
04. When Love Breaks Down 04:06
05. Goodbye Lucille #1 04:30
06. Hallelujah 04:19
07. Moving the River 03:57
08. Horsin’ Around 04:40
09. Desire As 05:19
10. Blueberry Pies 02:26
11. When the Angels 04:26 All songs written by Paddy McAloon
Disc Two: New Acoustic Versions (recorded Summer 2006) (00:34:59)
01. Appetite 03:57
02. Bonny 03:58
03. Desire As 07:09
04. When Love Breaks Down 04:25
05. Goodbye Lucille #1 03:55
06. Moving the River 03:39
07. Faron Young 03:47
08. When the Angels 04:09 All songs written by Paddy McAloon
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Disc One
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Disc Two
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Ñîäåðæàíèå èíäåêñíîé êàðòû (.CUE)
Disc One
REM GENRE Pop/Rock REM DATE 1985 REM DISCID 840A970B REM COMMENT "ExactAudioCopy v1.3" PERFORMER "Prefab Sprout" TITLE "Steve McQueen [2007 remastered ed., Disc 1]" REM COMPOSER "Paddy McAloon" FILE "01. Faron Young.wav" WAVE TRACK 01 AUDIO TITLE "Faron Young" PERFORMER "Prefab Sprout" REM COMPOSER "Paddy McAloon" FLAGS DCP INDEX 01 00:00:00 FILE "02. Bonny.wav" WAVE TRACK 02 AUDIO TITLE "Bonny" PERFORMER "Prefab Sprout" REM COMPOSER "Paddy McAloon" FLAGS DCP INDEX 01 00:00:00 TRACK 03 AUDIO TITLE "Appetite" PERFORMER "Prefab Sprout" REM COMPOSER "Paddy McAloon" FLAGS DCP INDEX 00 03:46:50 FILE "03. Appetite.wav" WAVE INDEX 01 00:00:00 TRACK 04 AUDIO TITLE "When Love Breaks Down" PERFORMER "Prefab Sprout" REM COMPOSER "Paddy McAloon" FLAGS DCP INDEX 00 03:59:11 FILE "04. When Love Breaks Down.wav" WAVE INDEX 01 00:00:00 TRACK 05 AUDIO TITLE "Goodbye Lucille #1" PERFORMER "Prefab Sprout" REM COMPOSER "Paddy McAloon" FLAGS DCP INDEX 00 04:05:49 FILE "05. Goodbye Lucille #1.wav" WAVE INDEX 01 00:00:00 TRACK 06 AUDIO TITLE "Hallelujah" PERFORMER "Prefab Sprout" REM COMPOSER "Paddy McAloon" FLAGS DCP INDEX 00 04:28:17 FILE "06. Hallelujah.wav" WAVE INDEX 01 00:00:00 FILE "07. Moving the River.wav" WAVE TRACK 07 AUDIO TITLE "Moving the River" PERFORMER "Prefab Sprout" REM COMPOSER "Paddy McAloon" FLAGS DCP INDEX 01 00:00:00 FILE "08. Horsin' Around.wav" WAVE TRACK 08 AUDIO TITLE "Horsin' Around" PERFORMER "Prefab Sprout" REM COMPOSER "Paddy McAloon" FLAGS DCP INDEX 01 00:00:00 TRACK 09 AUDIO TITLE "Desire As" PERFORMER "Prefab Sprout" REM COMPOSER "Paddy McAloon" FLAGS DCP INDEX 00 04:37:33 FILE "09. Desire As.wav" WAVE INDEX 01 00:00:00 FILE "10. Blueberry Pies.wav" WAVE TRACK 10 AUDIO TITLE "Blueberry Pies" PERFORMER "Prefab Sprout" REM COMPOSER "Paddy McAloon" FLAGS DCP INDEX 01 00:00:00 TRACK 11 AUDIO TITLE "When the Angels" PERFORMER "Prefab Sprout" REM COMPOSER "Paddy McAloon" FLAGS DCP INDEX 00 02:25:12 FILE "11. When the Angels.wav" WAVE INDEX 01 00:00:00
Disc Two
REM GENRE Rock REM DATE 2007 REM DISCID 60083208 REM COMMENT "ExactAudioCopy v1.3" PERFORMER "Prefab Sprout" TITLE "Steve McQueen [2007 remastered ed., Disc 2]" REM COMPOSER "" FILE "01. Appetite.wav" WAVE TRACK 01 AUDIO TITLE "Appetite" PERFORMER "Prefab Sprout" REM COMPOSER "Paddy McAloon" INDEX 01 00:00:00 FILE "02. Bonny.wav" WAVE TRACK 02 AUDIO TITLE "Bonny" PERFORMER "Prefab Sprout" REM COMPOSER "Paddy McAloon" INDEX 01 00:00:00 TRACK 03 AUDIO TITLE "Desire As" PERFORMER "Prefab Sprout" REM COMPOSER "Paddy McAloon" INDEX 00 03:57:28 FILE "03. Desire As.wav" WAVE INDEX 01 00:00:00 TRACK 04 AUDIO TITLE "When Love Breaks Down" PERFORMER "Prefab Sprout" REM COMPOSER "Paddy McAloon" INDEX 00 07:06:21 FILE "04. When Love Breaks Down.wav" WAVE INDEX 01 00:00:00 TRACK 05 AUDIO TITLE "Goodbye Lucille #1" PERFORMER "Prefab Sprout" REM COMPOSER "Paddy McAloon" INDEX 00 04:22:46 FILE "05. Goodbye Lucille #1.wav" WAVE INDEX 01 00:00:00 TRACK 06 AUDIO TITLE "Moving the River" PERFORMER "Prefab Sprout" REM COMPOSER "Paddy McAloon" INDEX 00 03:51:50 FILE "06. Moving the River.wav" WAVE INDEX 01 00:00:00 TRACK 07 AUDIO TITLE "Faron Young" PERFORMER "Prefab Sprout" REM COMPOSER "Paddy McAloon" INDEX 00 03:37:21 FILE "07. Faron Young.wav" WAVE INDEX 01 00:00:00 TRACK 08 AUDIO TITLE "When the Angels" PERFORMER "Prefab Sprout" REM COMPOSER "Paddy McAloon" INDEX 00 03:45:53 FILE "08. When the Angels.wav" WAVE INDEX 01 00:00:00
Äîï. èíôîðìàöèÿ
In another time, in another place, Paddy McAloon might have been happily productive somewhere between the Algonquin and Broadway in 1930s New York (“I want to be,” he once crooned, hopefully, “the Fred Astaire of words.”) Or beavering away in an office in the Brill Building in the ’50s. Or maybe some place on that off-kilter middle of the road between Burt Bacharach and Jimmy Webb in the ’60s. Almost anywhere, you might have thought, other than Britain in the mid-’80s. Some hard-hearted professors of pop would have it that 1985 was the absolute nadir of British music: all the fizz of new pop gone flat, the independent scene a twee shambles. Yet in records such as the Blue Nile’s A Walk Across the Rooftops, the [bPet Shop Boys’ Please, Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love, Scritti’s Cupid and Psyche 85, and especially in Prefab Sprout’s Steve McQueen, you have some of the most beautiful, enduring British pop music ever made. For a year or two, just before Live Aid and Q magazine, the challenge of making new pop for grown-ups without being dowdy, smug, or jaded was met, quite superbly. It’s this guile and grace that bands like Stars and Junior Boys still yearn for. The Sprout—it’s ironic that a writer so fleet-footed lumbered himself with such a clunking band name—had debuted in 1984 with Swoon, a record that suggested they were post-graduates of the Glasgow School, taking the Postcard label template to new levels of cryptic wit and elliptical jangle. But as McAloon made plain, his ambitions were far grander. He aspired to the standards of Stephen Foster, Gershwin, Sondheim, Quincy Jones, McCartney; saw himself as a contemporary of Prince rather than Lloyd Cole. He had a grand sense of pop music, and in 1985, that kind of grandeur seemed to be available via producers like Thomas Dolby. McAloon has said that Steve McQueen is Dolby’s record—he presented the producer with a vast archive of songs and asked him to choose his favorites. Yet this is true most obviously in the profoundly ’80s sonic palette. Rather wonderfully and typically, it seems that Dolby even chose to play the banjo on the opening track, the country pastiche “Faron Young,” via a Fairlight sampler. And the presence on this new reissue of an additional disc of acoustic versions of the songs—which took longer to record than the original—suggests that McAloon now feels embarrassed, as though the production has dated or even damaged his songs. I think he needn’t be so bashful; one of the defining qualities of the record is its pop ambition, its willingness to engage with its times, precisely by not being a sullen singer-songwriter would-be timeless classic. Imagine if Sinatra had decided that Nelson Riddle’s arrangements tied his albums to closely to the early ’50s. According to this additional disc, Steve McQueen might have been some perfectly prim and pleasant Go-Betweeny acoustic curio, rather than how it ended up: the kind of record you imagine Elvis Costello might have made had he been signed to ZTT and been ensconced in a studio with Trevor Horn. One thing the new versions do highlight is the astonishing maturity of the songs. Coincidentally, almost all of Dolby choices dated from 1979, when Paddy was 22. Yet they sound all the more appropriate sung by a man of 50. “Life’s not complete, ’til your heart’s missed a beat,” he sighed on “Goodbye Lucille #1,” but now when he sings “and you’ll never get it back,” his voice breaks with the wisdom of another two decades. Ironically, considering the producer’s name, it’s a record in so many ways about infidelity. Or let’s say about the consequences of romanticism. Take that cover: Paddy, looking like a dreamy young D.H. Lawrence, astride the kind of Triumph that would have carried the record’s namesake to freedom. But the whole album rails against easy escapism: “Appetite,” sung from the perspective of a girl left to bring up the baby of some young firebrand; “Desire As” seeing no escape from a lifetime of new flames; the rueful regrets of “Bonny.” And maybe I’m too much a child of those times myself, but it still sounds great to me: the glittering guitar that opens “Goodbye Lucille,” the 10cc/ZTT moments of “When Love Breaks Down.” Even Wendy Smith’s gaseous backing vocals, haunting the record like the ghost of Hayley Mills. In fact it seems to me that instead of stripping back the songs from their ’80s incarnations, the additional disc could have more profitably commissioned some original covers. McAloon was, after all, the original Stephin Merritt, so there’s no reason why he shouldn’t have his own 6ths. You can imagine these songs performed by, oh, Marianne Faithfull, Bryan Ferry, Will Young, Kylie Minogue, Rufus Wainwright, or Antony Hegarty. A handful of these songs have the quality of standards: there’s no reason why their real after-life shouldn’t begin now. (Stephen Trouss, Pitchfork, 29.08.2007) https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10562-steve-mcqueen-deluxe-edition/
Îá èñïîëíèòåëå (ãðóïïå)
One of the most acclaimed British pop bands of the ’80s and ’90s, Prefab Sprout was the creative vehicle of vocalist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Paddy McAloon, who has been regularly hailed as one of the greatest songwriters of his era. McAloon has often been compared favorably to Elvis Costello, Paul McCartney, and even Cole Porter, not just because of his lyrical and instrumental gifts but for the ambitious creative vision of his catalog. A notorious perfectionist who is also known for his shyness and his struggles with health problems, McAloon has created a relatively small body of work (ten albums in three decades), but Prefab Sprout’s music is beloved in the U.K., and they have a smaller but passionately loyal audience in the United States. Moving from the smart, beautifully crafted pop of 1984’s Swoon and 1985’s Steve McQueen (titled Two Wheels Good in the U.S.), Prefab Sprout would explore the influences of American music on 1988’s From Langley Park to Memphis, embrace the sound and style of stage musicals on 1990’s Jordan: The Comeback, use the Old West as a metaphor on the 2001 concept album The Gunman and Other Stories, and celebrated the power and energy of music on 2009’s Let’s Change the World with Music and 2013’s Crimson/Red. Prefab Sprout were formed in Newcastle, England, in 1977 by Paddy McAloon, who sings and plays guitar and piano, and his bass-playing younger brother, Martin. In the group’s early days, McAloon spun several fanciful tales about the origin of their odd name (one favorite was that the young McAloon had misheard the line “hotter than a pepper sprout” in Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood's “Jackson”), but the truth is that an adolescent McAloon had devised the meaningless name in homage to the long-winded and equally silly band names of his late-’60s/early-’70s youth. With an early fan, Wendy Smith, drafted into the lineup to sing helium-register backing vocals, the trio released its first single, “Lions in My Own Garden (Exit Someone),” on its own Candle label in July 1982. Written for a girlfriend who had left Newcastle to study in Limoges, France (check the acronym of the title), the song was exceedingly clever, but obviously heartfelt. The single’s warm reception, including many plays on John Peel’s radio show, led to the Sprout’s signing to CBS subsidiary Kitchenware Records, which reissued the single in April 1983. Another single, “The Devil Has All the Best Tunes,” followed later that year. Prefab Sprout’s first album, Swoon, was released in March 1984. Shortly after Swoon’s release, drummer Neil Conti joined the group, and Thomas Dolby was tapped to produce the second Prefab Sprout album, 1985’s Steve McQueen (retitled Two Wheels Good in the U.S. due to litigation from the late actor’s estate). Dolby smoothed out the kinks a bit, and his keyboards helped enrich the album’s sound. Prefab Sprout returned to the studio without Dolby in the summer of 1985 and quickly recorded an album’s worth of material that was initially meant to be released in a limited edition as a tour souvenir. However, several months after Steve McQueen was released, its song “When Love Breaks Down” (which had been released as a single four different times in the U.K. without chart success) finally became a hit, and CBS feared a new album would hurt its predecessor’s sales, so the project was shelved. The “proper” follow-up to Steve McQueen was 1988’s From Langley Park to Memphis. It became their biggest hit, thanks to the massive U.K. chart success of “The King of Rock and Roll” (about a one-hit wonder stuck performing his silly novelty song on the nostalgia circuit; ironically, it was Prefab Sprout’s sole U.K. Top Ten hit and remains their best-known song) and the U.S. college radio success of the genial Bruce Springsteen parody “Cars and Girls.” Following that chart action, CBS dusted off the shelved acoustic project from 1985 and released it (in the U.K. only) under the title Protest Songs in June 1989. Issued in 1990, Jordan: The Comeback, which McAloon describes as a concept album about Jesse James and Elvis Presley, was released to enormous critical acclaim in late 1990, but unfortunately, its ornate, lush production and suite-like structure doomed it to commercial failure in the U.S., though it was another big hit in the U.K. A fine but unimaginative best-of, A Life of Surprises, met similar respective fates in the summer of 1992. Many thought Prefab Sprout disbanded at that point, and indeed, Conti did leave the band at some point in the ’90s. However, McAloon had written (and in some cases, recorded) several albums’ worth of material during the first half of the decade, abandoning them all before finally releasing the crystalline Andromeda Heights in 1997. The album wasn’t even released in the U.S., but it was another deserved U.K. hit. An album of subtle beauty, Andromeda Heights showed how far McAloon had come as a songwriter and singer since Swoon. A much-improved two-disc anthology, The 38 Carat Collection, was released by CBS in 1999 as the group was leaving the label. (Unexpectedly, the group’s U.S. label, Epic, belatedly reissued this set as The Collection in early 2001.) Wendy Smith left the group during this period, after the birth of her first child. Prefab Sprout, by this point consisting solely of the McAloon brothers, signed to EMI in late 2000 and delivered their Western-themed concept album, The Gunman and Other Stories, in early 2001. Unfortunately, the album’s release was delayed several months when Paddy McAloon was diagnosed with a medical disorder rendering him partially blind. As McAloon was homebound due to his health problems between 1999 and 2002, he wrote an album of music inspired by true life stories he recorded from radio broadcasts. Combining the radio recordings with orchestral arrangements of McAloon’s melodies, the mostly instrumental I Trawl the Megahertz became his first solo album when it was released in 2003. After a six-year layoff, McAloon returned to recording as Prefab Sprout and released the self-produced, performed, and recorded Let’s Change the World with Music in 2009. This set’s songs and concept date to 1992 and were originally to be recorded as the follow-up album to Jordan: The Comeback; for various reasons, those sessions never happened. It was initially issued by Ministry of Sound and later in the year licensed by Sony/BMG in the U.K. In 2010, the independent Tompkins Square imprint issued the album in the United States. Both the album Crimson/Red and its lead single, “The Best Jewel Thief in the World,” were issued by the Icebreaker label in 2013. In March 2017, a video posted on the Internet featured a homemade solo acoustic clip of McAloon performing an original song, “America,” a protest against U.S. immigration policies under Donald Trump. In 2019, Sony reissued McAloon’s I Trawl the Megahertz under the Prefab Sprout banner. (Stewart Mason, AllMusic)
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Smart, sophisticated, and timelessly stylish, Steve McQueen (titled Two Wheels Good in the U.S. after threats of a lawsuit from the actor’s estate) is a minor classic, a shimmering jazz-pop masterpiece sparked by Paddy McAloon’s witty and inventive songwriting. McAloon is a wickedly cavalier composer, his songs exploring human weaknesses such as regret (“Bonny”), lust (“Appetite”), and infidelity (“Horsin’ Around”) with cynical insight and sarcastic flair; he’s also remarkably adaptable, easily switching gears from the faux country of “Faron Young” to the stately pop grace of “Moving the River.” At times, perhaps, his pretensions get the better of him (as on “Desire As”), while at other times his lyrics are perhaps too trenchant for their own good; at those moments, however, what keeps Steve McQueen afloat is Thomas Dolby’s lush production, which makes even the loftiest and most biting moments as easily palatable as the airiest adult contemporary confection. (Jason Ankeny, AllMusic)
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All instruments by Prefab Sprout: Paddy McAloon Martin McAloon Wendy Smith Neil Conti
and Thomas Dolby with Kevin Armstrong: guitar on tracks 6 & 9 (disc one) Mark Lockhart: saxophone on track 9 (disc one) Produced by Thomas Dolby, except for track 4 (by Phil Thornally) The acoustic versions performed by Paddy McAloon and mixed by Calum Malcolm
