From the Record Crate: Robert Palmer's 'Clues' is An Unexpectedly Delicious Crack at New Wave
While working on Talking Heads' 'Remain in the Light,' the English soul man stepped into the 80s
When I started Check This Out!, I knew I wanted to review new music, but the second part of my mission statement was to dig up older, possibly forgotten records from my personal collection.
My vinyl hoard has been in various stages of disarray for the past few years - sometimes fully boxed up, other times with some choice albums in rotation, but never all out in one place. Oh, and the downstairs neighbor didn’t help either.
Now I’ve got the space, and while bringing everything out this past week, I thought there’s no better time to start featuring some of these gems finally.
When pursuing the summer Friday mood, I have to start with Robert Palmer’s Clues from 1980. There’s the cover, which is why I picked it up at Record Surplus in Santa Monica in the first place (Amoeba is an institution and I love it dearly, but Record Surplus is always reasonably priced and it’s impossible to not walk out of there with empty hands - if you’re in Los Angeles, you can’t miss it). Standing shin-deep in the ocean, Palmer is listening to a Walkman, which was brand new then. Too cool.
The other reason it finds the summer mood is that Palmer recorded it in the Bahamas, where he relocated after the failure of his fifth album, Some People Can Do What They Like. Palmer spent the 70s known for his soul and funk work, but while playing percussion on the classic Talking Heads’ record Remain in the Light, he leaned into new wave, which was indeed fresh at the time, thanks to the advances in keyboards and synthesizers.
Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz repaid the favor and is the one pounding the skins on the album opener, “Looking for Clues.” Full of skittish synths, the song was a significant departure for Palmer and one of the videos featured on MTV’s first day. It’s pure foreshadowing of Palmer harnessing the power of the music video in the mid-80s when he would hit his commercial peak thanks to MTV and songs like “Addicted to Love” and later, “Simply Irresistible.”
The other single from Clues is “Johnny and Mary,” a brooding new wave number unlike anything Palmer had recorded before. Lowering his towering voice for a muzzled tone, it’s one of the great songs of early new wave. It’s also one of the reasons I love collecting used records, as you never know what you will find in them. Sometimes it’s old tickets or articles, or in this case, some handwritten lyrics on an NYC small claims court memo. Did this person work there and write these lyrics out at their apartment, or did they transfer the vinyl to a tape and write out the lyrics while listening to their new Walkman? I’ll never know, which makes it all that much more fun to find stuff like this.
While Chris Frantz plays on “Looking for Clues”, one shouldn’t skip the rest of the drum work either as Palmer’s usual drummer Dony Wynn does some entertaining stuff here, like on “What Do You Care” or my personal favorite, “I Dream of Wires,” which was co-written with fellow synth-man, Gary Numan. The rest of the b-side is excellent, too, with “Woke Up Laughing” exploring African rhythms ala Peter Gabriel and a cover of The Beatles’ “Not a Second Time,” in which Palmer added his own second verse to John Lennon’s early work. Closer “Found You Now” is the definition of new wave as Jack Waldman’s keyboards groove along with Wynn’s driving fills.
Clues charted but not to the levels Palmer would reach later in the decade, and it’s often forgotten when discussing the greatest early new wave albums. At a breezy thirty-one minutes and available at your local record store for under $5, there’s no reason not to add it to your collection if this is your kinda thing.
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