Somehow, whilst ‘Our Favourite Shop’ feels like an idea that was worth trying out but ultimately doesn’t really hang together, Cafe Bleu works. Like OFS it’s a mixture of songs in a mixture of styles, and like OFS (and everything else in the world) it has its higher points and lower points, but it still sings in harmony, somehow, whilst the latter struggles to keep the beat.
I think it’s partially because of the quality of its apparently more minor moments. The instrumentals are all worth the while, for Steve White’s wonderful drumming if nothing else, and the quieter vocal numbers are amongst some of my favourite things – there was so much energy going into the single releases that it seems perfectly reasonable for reworkings to turn up on here, particularly when they are such major reworkings that they virtually become new songs.
It’s the beginning of side two that I’m still not entirely sure about – at least they didn’t take it upon themselves to deliver the rap of A Gospel, and there is a violence in the delivery that matches the extreme violence of lyrics, astonishingly extreme, I can’t think of another example of anything on the left during the 80s who would have ever thought it appropriate to use rape as an analogy. Strength of your Nature is… I dunno. Lively? Hopeful? There’s desperation in the (very limited) lyrics but not in their delivery. It’s almost a condensed vocal riff on the closure of ‘Trans-Global Express’ from The Gift – ‘The responsibility you must bear / when it’s your own future in your hands / may be a hard one to face up to / but at least you will own yourself’. I don’t think it’s entirely succesful but it doesn’t stop the album from working, and after those two, things crescendo to go out on such a high – there’s the slightly MOR beauty of ‘You’re The Best Thing’, the pop-bounciness of ‘Here’s The One That Got Away’ (which I will play sometime with a story attached to it) and the ‘not as good as one of the best things ever but then what is’ version of ‘Headstart for Happiness’.
And then a playout track which was always one of my favourite ways to finish a night on the dancefloor or a compilation tape on the living room floor – I will even forgive Council Meetin’ the apostrophe because it is such a storming final track, a brilliant instrumental you can almost sing along to, and a record that just makes you want to move, a dance around the bedroom (or usually kitchen for me, to be honest) barnstormer that more than makes up for the few minor sins that came before.
And it occurs that perhaps one reason why Our Favourite Shop doesn’t quite work as well as it should is that it had this to match up to, and it couldn’t
The Style Council – Council Meetin’ mp3
As an aside, this is absolutely and definitely my new favourite internet based game. My high score is 391 and I haven’t lost yet, despite playing an awful lot of times (so often that twice I’ve won Kansas and one time even got Alaska).
