THE STRANGLERS "FELINE"
.
These are the large misunderstood
one. And Jean-Jacques still will be able to think that definitely one speaks
here only about people of which everyone fout. However, rigolards cynical, Stranglers
gave birth to a single?uvre but neither with the range nor with the taste of
all. Is not David Bowie who wants! At the same time, they were there almost.
But the fragile balance on which their finely thought simple music rested but,
elegant and primary at the same time, did not hold the shock of longevity, fatal
time which passes you which uses, and of the call of the hit-parades. Stranglers
did not know to convert the public with their cause and, on arrival, tired,
it is them which returned the weapons while ceasing being distinguished, while
being run in the mould, becoming thus quite inoffensive and completely useless,
vacuums of interest. Appeared into full punk furia, Stranglers benefitted from
the movement which made close-cropped table of the past. 
They also were new, were not caught for stars,
adopted a minimum look, famous all in black, and did not have mugs of first
of the class good-looking young men and manucurés. In same time, they
were not really accepted in the medium. Think, they could play their instruments!
Musicians! Ca made a little task in the batch?. Especially that they produced
a hybrid music, pop format but coldly carried out, all in squeakings of teeth
and lack of enthusiasm. It is that Stranglers proposed a music where neither
the British influence, its sugar refineries, its eccentricities and its glamour
showed through, nor the American influence, its deep roots, its swing and its
blues. In fact the men in black invented a kind of pop rock'n'roll resolutely
European, with the antipodes of the obligatory ways all traced by the Anglo-Saxons.
Stranglers used the same instruments that the others, composed and played of
the songs to the pop format suitable for the kind, but they subtly diverted
the whole to obtain a very personal result.
The principle rested on their
faculty to thwart the rules. Take "Paradise" on this disc: the piece
lasts a little less than 4 minutes and fact part of these old stories entêtantes,
with the verses balanced well and singing and the refrain imparable, of the
kind which does not leave you any more after some listenings. Banal. But here
is, Stranglers shift all the piece with disillusioned female blows of ch?urs,
an exaggeratedly naive voice lead and an orchestration délicieusement
funny, arrangements kitsch and obsolete atmosphere under the modern instrumentation.
A kind of vain joy, a trap, kind which enjôle and invites to the dance,
but station with the pieces of broken bottle strewing the track?. All things
considered, one refuses to let oneself go to the least easy emotion, one prefers
to twist the neck to him and to swallow it any rising. "Feline" is
revolving in the discography of Stranglers. It was necessary for them to pass
on the higher floor after the success of the tube "Brown Golden delicious".
This new album is done more modern then than ever and its equilibrism is sensitive
at every moment. Synthés make irruption in a way more constant than in
the past and Stranglers plays Kraftwerk about it, making use of it admirably
to freeze even more the matter all while propelling them in the connected discotheques.
Less succeeded is the electronic battery with its
plastic toms, especially 20 years afterwards. Ca has really a sound of shit
and its omnipresence can quickly appear tiring. Paradoxically, while making
smile, it can still add to the biscornu charm of Stranglers, with their mow
elegant and sad disenchantment nimbé of doucereuse irony. Stranglers
do not cease showing, throughout the album, which they are not easily deceived,
which all that is not quite significant nor quite serious. But why deprive itself
for all that the hope, the music? 
And owing to the fact that one can make pretence well believe in it because
one does not have in any event not of another choice and finally nothing of
to better do? And in these moments, where all the paradoxes are assembled finally
to perfection, one reaches tops as on monumental "Midnight Summer Dream"
of opening, limpid and racé, unforgettable. There, Men in black touch
something, really, and it is happiness. Thereafter, Stranglers will make more
and more under them, losing any originality and liming themselves in pop insipid
and unspecified. David Letterman has to cry about it and Patrick Eudeline was
undoubtedly content that all that confirms what it thought since always. Moreover,
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion should not delay to publish this disc nicely putassier,
to be inserted there if the sauce takes, or then to give up. It is the way very
traced, and Stranglers were not to be even astonished by it. 
It was fatal and logical. Bigre! Pauvres Men in black which foresaw the light and which, far from any Manicheism, made?uvre art. It was not possible in one time like ours. But they undoubtedly knew already all that. It was not for that that pretence did not have to be made test, not? "I don' T think anyone ever found paradise/' Cos paradise is based one dregs?." Insipid Repeat til. It is drawn from the song "Paradise". Then does Jean-Jacques, why one laugh, why one cries? Stranglers made both at the same time, it was much more practical. And nearer to reality.
Ben Kennedy