Black And White - Stranglers

I’m going through one of those retro periods at the moment with my music listening habits and this latest one has been fuelled by listening to a recent album release of another band. When I have one of these retro moments I nearly always start by listening to a Stranglers album, and the first album I always pick first to listen to is this one, ‘Black and White’. After the release and success of both 'Rattus Norvegicus' and 'No More Heroes', The Stranglers released their third album 'Black and White' in May 1978. 'Black and White' was (for me anyway) the turning point for The Stranglers; it was a break of style from their first couple of ...

I remember well waiting with baited breath for the release of The Stranglers' third album back in 1978. I was a committed fan back then and looked forward to some new material after the first two albums which had been drawn almost entirely from their sterling live sets. Unfortunately I was pretty ill at the time having had an appalling reaction to some penicillin after having had an abscess dealt with by the dentist and so had a very strange experience when I came to finally play the thing. Black And White, after the masterpiece of Rattus Norvegicus and the patchy mess of No More Heroes, was the dirty old men's shot at stretching their wings ...

Black and White was released in 1978, the year following the Stranglers' first two magnificent albums, 'Rattus Norvegicus' and 'No More Heroes'. Their record company, perhaps influenced by their chart success, packaged it with a bonus white vinyl single record. One black vinyl LP, with a black label on one side and a white label on the other, plus a white single. Truly Black and White. I listened to these records and I didn't like them. I put them away and forgot about them. Other albums came which I played while Black and White languished forgotten. Many years later I was working in Stockholm, living in a rented apartment with ...