Nostalgia has turned the 1980s into a feel-good decade of nothing but John Hughes movies, colorful clothing and technological breakthroughs. Yet it was anything but. The era of excess was a bucketful of maladies: Sex killed you. Runaway inflation. Crack cocaine. Richard Marx.
Today the lasting snapshot of the ’80s is embodied through its music — there’s rarely a day when tunes from the decade aren’t heard on the radio, in commercials or on movie soundtracks. For a brief window of time, The Outfield ruled the 1980s, as the British trio brought to America its love of baseball and a tremendous set of hook-laden songs. Its 1985 debut album Play Deep was a smash, and the single “Your Love” continues to be played 25 years later (Even Katy Perry covered it, though she should be sued for her dreadful interpretation).
Fast forward 26 years and The Outfield has returned with Replay, its 10th studio album and first since 2006, and if I had to use a baseball term to describe the offering (a practice the band loves to do on songs and album titles), it must be strikeout. Or 0-for-12. It’s one thing to sound like the 1980s when it is the 1980s, but quite another when it’s 2011. The band should be forced to hear Perry’s slipshod version of its shining hit over and over again, for it can’t be worse than hearing Replay more than once
Maybe it’s Tony Lewis’ voice, a high-tonal cry that dominates everything below it. Or perhaps the rehash of musical cliches — the drum break in “Aladdin’s Cave” is pure Night Ranger. Who the hell does an homage to Night Ranger? Ultimately it comes down to a matter of editing, as the record lingers like an overly-long hangnail.
Take “Process” (please), a perfect song for a movie musical montage, if you like that sort of thing. It opens with an arpeggio guitar arrangement you’ve heard many times before, followed by a drum intro so ordinary and rote, even a 2-year-old knows when it’s coming and how it sounds. The chorus, the bridge is all so typical, it’s paint by numbers in song form.
It’s not all a loss. One song of the lot has a nice mix of rhythm and purpose as Lewis winds down the screech to a bare minimum. The song’s name: “A Long, Long Time Ago.” How apropos.
I guess you can’t blame the band too much — this is what it knows and it’s worked in the past. The longing is apparent, as the lyrics to “Disraeli Years” begin “Those were the days/ soundtrack to our lives/ it’s hard to explain/ the way it made me feel.” Hey, I understand, and I can say way back when it made me feel pretty good. But it’s past time to move along.
