Prefab Sprout: Jordan. The Comeback - Let's Change the World with Music

I was lucky to find a very decent vinyl copy of Prefab Sprout's Jordan. The CD is wonderfully recorded, really punchy and vivacious. I was startled to hear how different, in a way, the LP sounds. The overall sonic image is similar, but the LP is much more luscious and airy. And the resulting listening experience is different. The whole thing comes across as much more laid back and mellower. Which works well with the wistful undertone of the LP. I really like them both, LP and CD, and it will depend on mood whether one or the other will see rotation.

I have been reading up a bit on what happened to Prefab Sprout after Jordan and the story about their follow-up CD is really intriguing. In fact, the work didn't see the light of day until 2009 and was long regarded as 'lost'. Why this happened, is not clear. Wikipedia writes this:

During an interview (...) McAloon explained that in 1993 at a meeting with Sony he presented a tape of about fourteen songs as the follow-up to the lengthy Jordan: The Comeback. Apparently there were too many people in the room and the meeting did not go well. Although Sony wanted him to trim the record down to a more manageable length, for whatever reason there was a misunderstanding and McAloon understood that they wanted him to expand on just one or two of the ideas (rather than just trim 1 or 2 of the songs from the album). He then went away for a year and a half and developed one of the 3 minute songs into a 30 song piece of music. After a period he realised that was not what they wanted, but by this point it was too late.

In the sleeve notes, McAloon writes:

Now it goes without saying that I would have liked to have recorded Let's Change the World with Music with Marty, Wendy, and Thomas; I believe they wanted to, but we missed our moment so it wasn't to be. Why? I have no idea. Beats me. Anyway, one day in May '93 we made a poor move. But hey, water under the bridge. I blinked and went back to the drawing board. Back then, all that really mattered to me were those yawning caves of blue.

Tantalising. The 'yawning caves of blue' McAloon refers to go back to his fascination for the Beach Boys' 'lost' album Smiles. In a magazine he read about the experimental music on this album as 'containing glitter and sunshine, yet there were profound shades of blue like yawning caves or climbing through thick ivy". This phrase stuck with McAloon and it was this that animated him when he sat down to write the follow-up to Jordan:

I put everything I had into the songs, some which employ - funnily enough - overtly spiritual metaphors: music as a consoling force, an inspiration, even - perhaps - music as the voice of the sublime. Occasionally I leaned on the kind of language and imagery you might find in gospel music. I was trying to capture some of the stuff that makes soul, or gospel by that kind of language, would you? You would have seen what I was up to . That's right. I was talking about transcendence. Transcendence through music. Yep. That's what I was up to seventeen years ago.

Paddy McAloon wrote all the songs and performed, recorded and produced the lot in his private studio too. What kind of album is it? It is an animated album and draws life from the same spiritual vein as Jordan did. It is an album about a deep, abiding love in the force of music to heal and give meaning to our lives. McAloon wears his love, almost naively so, on his sleeve. The song titles speak volumes: Let There be Music, I Love Music, Music is a Princess, Last of the Great Romantics, Sweet Gospel Music ... But despite the lyrical outpourings it's an album that is propelled forward by an energetic beat. Most of the material is decidedly uptempo. Ballads there are almost none (Great Romantics, perhaps). The arrangements are surprisingly luscious, given that McAloon did it all by himself. But it's all synths; there is almost no acoustic instrument to be detected in the thicket. Hard to say which are my favourite songs: the introductory trio - Let There Be Music, Ride, I Love Music - is a great opener, but I'm also very fond of Earth: The Story so Far, Falling in Love, and the absolutely infectuous beat on Sweet Gospel Music. The only letdown, maybe, is the very end where neither Meet the New Mozart nor Angel of Love are able to capture the poignant mixture of impermanence and hope that makes Jordan such as memorable experience.

The recorded sound on Music is compact and rather heavy on the lower and mid range of the spectrum. But it's not at all displeasing. I've spent some very enjoyable hours glued in my chair whilst Let's Change the World With Music washed over me at high volume settings. Thanks, Paddy.