M**Y
The Wake's undisputed crowning achievement....with extras!
Much-maligned Factory band The Wake were forever being criticised and dismissed as inferior Joy Division / New Order copyists by the music press at the time. Although their output on the label was paltry, taking in just four singles and two albums, their influence on a lot of the post-80s indie/janglepop/synth fraternity cannot go unnoticed. Legendary Sarah band The Field Mice, for instance, owe a good chunk of their sound and influences to not just New Order and the Go-Betweens, but, tellingly, The Wake too. Their 1989 single "If You Need Someone" is a direct lift melodically and instrumentally of the sound and mood of this 1985 album - considered now in hindsight by many more discerning music fans to be The Wake's definitive crowning achievement.For all their alleged debt to the sound of New Order, "Here Comes Everybody" is a giant step up from their patchy and rather drab debut 1982 effort "Harmony", in that the tunes are much stronger and the arrangements far more accomplished. In fact if there is one main gripe about this album, it's the apparent uniformity of sound that occurs throughout - the same instruments on every track making it sound somewhat samey (it's completely dominated by Carolyn Allen's synths). However, from the gorgeous, tearjerking opener "O Pamela" onwards, with its pleading sentiments ['will you take a walk with me by the ocean, O Pamela, before it's too late....?'], it's like a bittersweet dream unravelling......emotions seesawing between euphoria and despair. "Send Them Away" is more reflective still, and even here the keyboards which hold the track crank up another notch at the 1.26 minute mark, like the sun suddenly bursting out from behind a cloud, to blinding effect. "Melancholy Man" is one of those songs that does exactly what it says on the tin.... impossibly self-descriptive to the extent of pulling off two sucker-punches: the words "long grey overcoat which trails upon the ground" within the first verse and then quoting wholesale a couplet from Don McLean's "Vincent" right at the end.The short, upbeat and sweet "World Of Her Own" is probably the sunniest track on the album, Caesar's harmonica and Carolyn's backing vocals adding a bit of icing to the prominent synth arrangements which STILL dominate every note, whilst "Torn Calendar" and the title track slow the pace down a little, the latter reintroducing the dubby bass lines which The Wake made much use of in their earlier recordings.The original album comprised just eight tracks, but this 2002 reissue [yeah, I KNOW it's taken me 10 years to get round to writing an Amazon review for it!!] includes the two singles that preceded it (1984's "Talk About The Past" and 1985's "Of The Matter") and then the final 1987 EP "Something That No One Else Could Bring" that was released to very little promotion or fanfare, thus sadly sinking without trace. One unfortunate problem with this release is that all of the tracks (bar "Talk About The Past") have been remastered from vinyl as the original tapes were lost, this has created some slight problems in the audio quality as the tracks all sound ever so slightly warped/off centre to the more discerning ear.However, such apparent glitches are all but forgotten when you consider tunes as strong as these additional singles [best of the bunch being "Gruesome Castle" and "Pale Spectre" off the 1987 EP] appending the original album, despite "Of The Matter" strangely coming across like a composite of "Sail Through" and "World Of Her Own" from the parent album, and sounding for all the world like it was recorded and mastered through a fluffy stylus!!Anyway, thanks to the astute Factory Records reissue programme of James Nice at LTM, we've been treated to 16 tracks of pretty consistently good quality which makes an outright mockery of the accusations of The Wake being just another New Order copyist act. For anybody who has yet to investigate the back catalogue of this previously-forgotten band who are, happily, going through a bit of a critical renaissance right now (and deservedly so!), this is probably the best starting point.P.S. It comes as no surprise then, to discover that this album has recently been released as a special - and sumptuously-packaged - super limited edition 2x vinyl LP box set for the worldwide Record Store Day..... the first 12" being the original 8 track album and the second 12" being the singles and EP tracks....... sweet!
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