All the Thompson Twins albums (+ Babble) ranked!
The Thompson Twins. They were my very first favorite band. I've been with them through the ups and downs, and the fall before last I finally got to see their songs performed by Tom Bailey, the frontman who was most responsible for the band's actual music anyway. Of course I would have preferred to see the whole band live, but it was really more than I ever imagined would happen anyway and was an amazing experience. Collecting these albums was a journey for me, the first of many similar journeys as I found and fell in love with other bands throughout my life time, but the Twins will always be the one that started it all!
The second and final release by Babble, the band the Thompson Twins eventually morphed into, is not really a bad album per se. It's very chill and ambient and therefore easy to throw on in the background, but as a result it's just not that memorable. The only songs that stand out for me are "Hold the Sky," "Just Like You," and "Love Has No Name." Alannah sings lead on the first two of those, which is somewhat surprising since she had previously mainly sung backup. Ultimately, it's the band's swan song, so it's a little disappointing how monotonous and repetitive a lot of it is, considering how eclectic their career was over the years. It would have been nice to have a little more variety and experimentation here. Highlight: My favorite is "Hold the Sky."
Out of the entire Thompson Twins catalog, this is my least favorite. After the departure of Joe Leeway, it was just down to Tom and Alannah, and they didn't seem to be very happy about it or much else. Gone was the quirky sounds of their enormously successful run of hit albums between 1983 and 1985, replaced with a very middle-of-the-road, adult rock sound that was reminiscent of Sting or Steve Winwood. When I first started collecting The Thompson Twins' albums, this was one of the first ones I was able to obtain since I just had to go off what was available and what I could afford, and even then I was disappointed because it didn't have their zany style or sense of humor like earlier albums. There are some strong songs on here, but little of the magic that made the previous three albums so special. Highlight: I thought Alannah looked so pretty on the cover but it bugged me that you could only see half of her face at a time, so I very, very careful unglued the edges of the cover together so that I could lay it out flat and gaze upon her entire visage! Then I meticulously glued it all back.
I used to think this was just the strangest album, especially because it looks and sounds nothing like the group that dominated the mid-80s! It's kind of astonishing now to look back and realize that this, and the Human League's debut album "Reproductions" were already in my record collection before I was even a teenager. In fact, it's pretty unbelievable that I even had this at all since it was not released in the US; I somehow had the fortune to find a used copy on vinyl at my smalltown record store, for probably under a dollar. Obviously I had never had the opportunity to see the band live in its original incarnation, but from what I had read, this album was not able to live up to the reputation the band had for crazy live shows where audience members were all encouraged to bang on various objects like pots, pans, hubcaps and whatever else the band had brought for them. However, it definitely has a unique vibe, being peppered with Gregorian chants and African rhythms. Highlight: Definitely Perfect Game, which was one of two songs included from this album when it was combined with their second album and retitled "In the Name of Love" for the US market.
As the first Babble album, it felt like, although they had gone into a more ambient and down-tempo territory, there was still some excitement with the new direction and name which is evident in this album. For me specifically, I was so shocked when I first discovered the internet and was able to search for Thompson Twins and found out they had continued making music under a different name. I immediately went and ordered this album from my local record shop and was just so happy when I finally got to hear it. It was at a very specific time in my life, in college, when I was working at McDonalds and had been selected to help open a new location in a smaller town about 30 minutes west of where I lived. This album provided the soundtrack for a lot of driving on interstate going to and from the new store, and I was excited to be a part of it, and excited to be hearing new music from Tom and Alannah. Highlight: The one-two punch of closing numbers "Sunray Dub" and the sinister "Drive."
I think this may be the one that time has been least kind to. It's too slick for its own good. I didn't own it when it was originally released, but I very much remember the hits "King for a Day" and "Lay Your Hands on Me" being played on the radio. I did eventually get it on cassette tape and I remember one particular family car trip where we ended up listening to this several times over because we didn't have any other cassette tapes in the car. Knowing now how much turmoil the band had been in - relentless touring and promoting schedules had left Tom exhausted - it's no surprise that underneath layers of production sheen (courtesy of Nile Rodgers) the songs are often kind of a mess. In junior high music class we were allowed to create music videos working in teams and my team filmed "Don't Mess With Doctor Dream," even though I couldn't decipher half the lyrics and had no idea that the song was actually about heroin abuse. I used to be obsessed with "You Killed the Clown" and "Rollover" has stood up very well, but songs like "Love is the Law" and "Tokyo" sound slapped together. Highlight: "Lay Your Hands On Me" is a great single, and overall this was a great end of the trilogy of the three albums released by the three band members during its most popular inclination. Considering the brilliance of the first two, and the shine of this, it is a very satisfying trifecta.
I remember when I first saw this album for sale in Goldmine Magazine, I was not sure what it even was. I had "In the Name of Love" and "A Product Of..." both of which I had found at my local record shop. It turned out that this was the band's second album, released only in the UK. The album that I knew as "In The Name of Love" was a US release that repackaged "Set," removing some of the weird, less-accessible tracks and replacing them with a couple of the most-accessible tracks from "A Product Of." Although with a bigger sound and more finesse than the debut album, this set (pun intended) also contained some aforementioned really weird and/or dark songs: "Tok Tok," "Crazy Dog" and "Blind." The last two still give me little tingles sometimes when I listen to them. It definitely would have been interesting to see where the original lineup would have gone next after this album, which was kind of an "alternative" album way before that genre was being promoted. Highlight: Obviously, the single "In the Name of Love" took on a life of its own, and took the band (or at least three members!) in a completely different direction - up the charts!
This is a big one for me! Thompson Twins actually became my favorite band AFTER all their successful albums had already long since been released, and well after Joe Leeway had departed. I bought "Close to the Bone" right after ordering the "Greatest Mixes" album, and from there collected the rest of the earlier releases. So it had been several years and without the internet to give any updated information, I had just assumed the group was a thing of the past. Through the (almost) two long years that I had considered the Twins my favorite band, I spent countless hours saydreaming of a new Thompson Twins album. But I had pretty much lost the faith (childhood years seeming so much "longer" in retrospect). Then one day I was in my bedroom and turned the radio on. I was hearing a song and I thought, not really thinking much about it, that it sounded almost like it could be Thompson Twins. I was more thinking about how it sounded of a similar quality and style and was sort of lamenting how the Twins were no longer around. When the song ended, the DJ announced it as the new single from the Thompson Twins, and you just can't imagine my sheer joy and excitement! From that point forward all I could think about was the new album. I'd make my mom go look for it at any place that sold records or tapes. It was a long wait for the actual album to come out, but I was not disappointed with anything other than the fact that it wasn't a bigger hit! Highlight: Of course the single "Sugar Daddy" was a huge thrill, even getting to see the video on MTV on occasion, but being that I had also really gotten into Blondie I was also tickled by Deborah Harry's spoken part on "Queen of the USA."
Once again, after the release of "Big Trash" it seemed the Twins disappeared and I had feared they most likely had called it a day. It was kind of a bittersweet moment when I found this cassette at Wal-Mart without any fanfare or previous knowledge of it. I was thrilled to have discovered a new Twins album but this time, I hadn't known anything about it before or heard any of the songs on the radio or MTV. It had felt like with "Big Trash" the Twins had been able to regain a little bit of their foothold in the pop world, and it was disheartening to me at the time that this hadn't been given enough publicity. Despite the lack of promotion of the album, I was pleasantly surprised to find the band sounding in top form, with a lot of great songs and some nice textures and new elements introduced into the repertoire. I was especially keen on the pop sensibilities of "Flower Girl" and "My Funky Valentine" and really dug the Feedback Max remix of "Come Inside" and the ambience of "The Saint" (even though the lyrics make no sense). Highlight: Whenever my cassette would near the end of side two, my ears would perk up with the atmospheric "The Saint" and the trancey remix of "Come Inside" known as the Feedback Max Remix. It's too bad that Tom (and co-producer Keith Fernley, later of Babble) wasn't allowed to change the Twins sound in the way that he obviously wanted to. Maybe they could have released the record they really wanted to and achieved success with that, and then they wouldn't have felt the need to change to Babble and go full-out with that newer sound.
Last night, in my post-holiday depression, I was trying to remember what year it was when I received this album as a Christmas gift and pinpointed it to 1988. I realized that 1988 was the year I fell in love with the Thompson Twins, because I remember it was when their "Greatest Mixes" album came out, along with the re-mixed and re-released single "In the Name of Love '88". I was 11 years old, and it had been a year since the band had released it's last album, "Close to the Bone." Back at that tender age, years felt like lifetimes, and it seemed like the Thompson Twins had been gone forever, even though they had just released an album a year ago, and released a hits package that very year, and it seemed like they were gone for good at that point, even though it would only be one short year later before they released "Big Trash"! Anyway, back to "Quick Step and Sidekick," which had been changed to simply "Sidekicks" in the US and included a bunch of instrumental remixes. At the time, it was not my favorite album because it seemed a little less accessible than "Into the Gap" and "Here's To Future Days," one of which I know I also received that Christmas and the other one I probably obtained shortly thereafter. But in retrospect, it has something about it that is quite special, most likely because it's the first album after the band shucked over half it's members and changed its sound dramatically. It has the sheen of newness, even over thirty years later, and blends experimentation with accessibility. The big bass synth sounds, the wacky lyrics, and the pounding electronic drums mix perfectly with twinkly dinkly keyboards and percussion noises. A classic of it's time. Highlight: I always enjoyed the high drama of "Judy Do" (wondering who "Judy" was) and the tense, sparse "Kamikaze."
What can you really say about this? Although it took me a few years to fully appreciate, "Into the Gap" is the band's masterpiece, and the symbol of an entire era. From the striking visual imagery of the cover to the unstoppable hit "Hold Me Now" and the series of other hits from the album, this is the Twins at their creative and commercial peak. The lesser-known songs such as "Day After Day" and "Storm on the Sea" show that the quality level is high throughout the entire album. Each song paints a picture and sounds new and innovative for the time and even for today. It still sound clean and crisp. The mixture of synthesizers and guitar, with both synthetic drums and acoustic percussion blend perfectly. Although by no means a novelty album, it almost sounds like a cartoon in a way. All the pieces came together for this classic album. Highlight: "You Take Me Up" has always been my favorite song, an enduring classic, but later in life I really came to appreciate the zaniness and eastern-influence of "The Gap."
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