Thursday, August 4, 2016

Dead Neighbours - Strangedays: Strangeways (1985, Sharko)

Dead Neighbours were a UK conglomerate who began life as a psychobilly type thing...which is an almost immediate non-starter for yours truly.  For their second album Strangedays: Strangeways, DN largely ditched said modus operandi for a considerably more serious post-punk template that was altogether more melodic, not to mention variably melancholic.  The insertion of ex-Cocteau Twin Will Heggie in the Neighbors lineup is credited for this transition, with the end result yielding something akin to the Chameleons and to a lesser extent Red Lorry Yellow Lorry.  Strangedays... isn't wall-to-wall gold, but I'll be damned if "Wreckage of Your Mind" and "The Ultimate Goal" are nothing short of immaculate.  Love the throbbing bass and echo-y guitar workouts, sounding like they were plucked from the first Big Country album.

After the demise of the Neighbours in the mid-80s, frontman Craig Lorentson founded Lowlife, a considerably more accomplished troupe who parlayed the atmospherics of Strangedays to a far loftier level that mingled ethereal dream pop and goth into something fairly breathtaking.  This album's concluding "Cowards Way" was later retooled as an equally effective Lowlife song in 1986.  You can find supplementary info on Dead Neighbours over at Cripsy Nuggets blog, who for better or worse are also sharing that ill advised first album.

01. Wreckage of Your Mind
02. Turmoil
03. Terror Eyes
04. The Survivor
05. The Ultimate Goal
06. Beauty and the Beast
07. Tell Me Why
08. The Cowards Way

Hear

2 comments:

Woody said...

Thank you very much!!!

Paul said...

Thanks for putting me onto Lowlife, lovely low key post-punk.