The Group - I Hear I See I Learn (1984)

And here's yet another one I definitely did not come across in the pages of Maximum Rock n Roll.  Relax, it sounds considerably better than it looks, but as you might surmise from the album sleeve, this combo's innovation meter tended to register a tad low. Oddly enough, for a band who chose a moniker as mundane as The Group, these co-eds actually went by a different name a few years prior, X-Effects, to be exact, and released a 1980 single under that banner. The 45 in question has been classified as punk/new wave...and I'll be astonished if I ever get to hear the damn thing.  

Faring better than say, the Thompson Twins or Oingo Boingo typically did, these Brits nonetheless had all the attendant '80s sonic aptitudes and production values bleeding well into the red.  Vaguely resembling a conglomerate of the Fixx and Howard Jones (more of the former thankfully), The Group's commercial ambitions (and even more likely those of their label, Arista) are audibly and visibly pronounced, but crazy enough they managed to whip up at least half an album's worth of memorable, even commendable tunes ("Victims of Circumstance," "Turn of The Century," and "She's 19").  Despite the fact that I Hear... is surprisingly salvageable, from what I gather this LP suffered an utterly indifferent fate upon it's release.  Final factoid - there are no less than three album cover variants for this one floating around, largely dependent upon which country you reside. 

01. America

02. She's 19

03. Iron Chains

04. Private Future

05. Talk to Myself

06. Victims of Circumstance

07. Turn of the Century

08. Republic

Hear