I had a crafty look at my neighbour’s CD collection the other day. I was supposed to be watering his plants, and obviously I fulfilled that task with my characteristic attention to detail, miraculously failing to kill any of them in the ten days he was away.
I had a crafty look at my neighbour’s CD collection the other day. I was supposed to be watering his plants, and obviously I fulfilled that task with my characteristic attention to detail, miraculously failing to kill any of them in the ten days he was away. But I was drawn to the music shelves as a wasp is to jam. He receives nearly as many of those pleasing little cardboard CD-shaped packages from Amazon as I do. What was in them? Joni Mitchell, it turned out. John Martyn, Tom Waits, Neil Young, a little Van Morrison (which goes a long way), Dylan, of course, most of the great 1970s singer-songwriters…and also a smattering of Prefab Sprout. No, more than a smattering: an abundance. A man of taste, then. Must make sure not to overwater his geraniums.
As it happens I had had a new Prefab Sprout CD sitting on my own music shelf, unplayed, for several months. This is not the usual rock critic bleat: too many CDs, too little time. (Can anyone have too many CDs?) It’s just that I bought Let’s Change the World with Music (Kitchenware) when it came out late last year, then didn’t play it in case it turned out to be rubbish. Hopeless, I know, but only the bands you love most can affect you in this way.
Pop music has its share of impossibly robust egos, seemingly invulnerable to criticism and sharp blows to the head. But there are also some gentle souls out there trying to keep careers going, and one of them, you sense, is Paddy McAloon, the utterly singular talent behind Prefab Sprout. For those of us yet to give up on him, Let’s Change the World with Music was a significant release. It’s not so much the new album as the lost album. After their three great records — Steve McQueen (1985), From Langley Park to Memphis (1988) and Jordan: The Comeback (1990) — there was a gap of seven years until the very different Andromeda Heights, which saw McAloon’s love of Sondheim and Gershwin take flight and all rock’n’roll-isms left behind. The listening public listened once and never played it again.
I have written before in this space of my love for this audacious but patchy record. There’s a yearning in these songs that is almost painful, and a romanticism so unabashed that you are prepared to overlook some over-syrupy arrangements and a few songs too slender for purpose. But where did it all come from? Seven years is a long time in the career of a songwriter, especially one as prolific as McAloon, who has written hundreds, possibly thousands of songs he hasn’t got round to recording. Let’s Change the World with Music turns out to be his missing link.
In 1992 McAloon, who has a fondness for overriding concepts, came up with his boldest yet: an album celebrating the transcendental nature of music itself. The songs — which included ‘Let There Be Music’, ‘Music Is a Princess’, ‘Sweet Gospel Music’ and the fate-tempting ‘Meet the New Mozart’ — sounded Sprouty enough, with occasional acid house overtones, but the lyrics were full of what McAloon himself describes in his sleevenotes as ‘overtly spiritual metaphors: music as a consoling force, an inspiration, even, perhaps, music as the voice of the sublime.’ He recorded some demos and played them to the suits at the record company. They weren’t keen. It all sounded a bit religious to them. McAloon seems to have got the wrong end of the stick and interpreted their lack of enthusiasm as outright rejection. The songs were never recorded by the full band. But, more damagingly, at around the same time, the band started to fall apart. Neil Conti, their excellent drummer, moved on and Wendy Smith, whose backing vocals were such an intrinsic part of the band’s sound, got herself a proper job.
The songs on the released version of Let’s Change the World with Music are those home-recorded demos, cleaned up a little and rather wonderful in their way, but you can’t help wondering how they would have sounded if done properly by the band, which might still be together and interpreting McAloon’s glorious songs as only they can. (The most recent album, recorded with session musicians, showed how much they were missed.) It’s not just what might have been, it’s what might be now that we have lost. In the meantime, McAloon has grown a long white beard and sits at home in County Durham, writing yet more songs he may never record. It’s probably what happens when you want to change the world with music and the world says sorry, but no.
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