They Were the Meninblack and They Were Coming to Eat You (The Raven - Stranglers)

Name: Templar19

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Product:	The Raven - Stranglers
Date:	11/05/08 (204 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Musically complex, dark, original, still fresh

Disadvantages: None

Some say that it's pointless to wax too lyrically about anything much, if only because opinions are partial, sometimes irrational, jealously protected and liable to cause sparks if they come into contact with their polar opposites. Sometimes the other guy just can't admit the error of his ways! That said, my opinions are reasonably flexible but with one or two exceptions. Chief among these is my conviction that the Stranglers' fourth album, 'The Raven', was not only their best but also one of the best albums of its era. There, I've said it and I can't take it back. The conviction is in my old bones like dry rot, and so I suppose the least I can do is make an attempt to justify what to many might seem an exaggerated statement.

'The Raven' was recorded in Paris in the early Summer of 1979 and was the culmination of a rapid musical evolution the Stranglers had been undergoing since the release of their first two albums, 'Rattus Norvegicus' and 'No More Heroes', in 1977. Together, these two albums had contained the whole repertoire of early songs that had put the band at the forefront of the punk/post-punk scene, although the Stranglers were never confidently labelled with either tag, and a good thing too; they were above categorization, a fact that delighted their fans and frustrated music journalists. That early sound was a brash and (sometimes) brutal mixture of thundering bass-lines, swirling keyboards and contemptuous vocals. The Stranglers were a ferocious and often-abrasive live act.

But with the release in 1978 of their third album, 'Black and White', the band introduced a wholly more complex sound. The aggressive bass-lines and in-your-face lyrics were still to be found but the breadth of the songs had widened considerably. The album had a white side and a black side (hence the title) and on the latter the imagery and ideas (and band-image) that would come to obsess band and fans alike began to take shape: darkness, death, threat, black... the Meninblack. 'Black and White' was an ambitious and original album and its commercial success spurred the band on to even greater efforts of experimentation with ideas and themes, serious and not-so-serious. The first, and most successful, flowering of these ideas was 'The Raven'.

Released in September 1979, 'The Raven' sold well, reaching No. 2 in the U.K. Album Chart, and was a refreshingly-sinister breath of foetid air in a year dominated by those bottle-blonde beach-bunnies, The Police. It was also the first Stranglers album to receive consistently-positive reviews (although that mattered little to band and fans alike). The title of the album doesn't really mean too much. The raven motif was a favourite adornment on Viking war-banners and although the first two tracks on this album are Viking-related the rest explore a number of themes that have nothing to do with big sinister birds, although these themes are consistently dark. That said, the bird on the cover does look surprisingly self-important and cheerful. He or she has the look of a bird that knows something we don't!

The difficulty comes when we try to pin this album down. In trying to do so we can get a feel for how frustrated music journalists became with the band, the music being so strange and, at times, so complex. On listening to 'The Raven' again in order to reset my old memory cells (notoriously unreliable, as they often are) I was struck by how familiar AND unfamiliar the tracks sounded. I found myself noticing musical sequences that had never before pricked my interest, and I've listened to this album on and off for almost thirty years (Jeez, that's a depressing thought!). It still sounds fresh AND sinister and that can only be a tribute to a band that was approaching the peak of its creativity.

The Tracks

1) Longships - A surreal beginning. 'Longships' is a short instrumental, running in at just over a minute, that sounds like a manic, speeded-up waltz that wouldn't be out of place (slowed down) in an old British horror-movie. Keyboard-ace Dave Greenfield's swirling notes are memorable and will continue to be so throughout the album.

2) The Raven - Something of a band standard, this deceptively-simple track consists of a speedy and hypnotic drum and bass with keyboard and twangy guitar notes dipping in and out as everything slowly builds to a rising synth-crescendo: the raven flies away after having inspired the Norseman to set his world aflame! Bass man JJ Burnel sings the vocal with a breathy impatience.

3) Dead Loss Angeles - A wonderfully-sinister tune that is unlikely ever to be used by the L.A. Tourist Office in its commercials. Again it is a play between a gruff bass and a spare, scrunchy keyboard. Less is definitely more. "They're soft marshmallow there, in Dead Loss Angeleeess... ." A great song.

4) Ice - I find this song almost impossible to describe... it's just so damned complicated. It has several jarring-but-pleasing key-changes, church organ, Space-Invader-type synth and there's even a bongo drum in there somewhere. Needless to say, it's a song about Hagakure, the code of the Samurai, and in particular, the attractions of ritual disembowelment! I'm sure someone could write a book about this song (perhaps someone already has). Inspired and fantastic.

5) Baroque Bordello - Another multi-layered and multi-paced track that defies description. It's a musical tour de force, haunting and beautiful, with a poetic lyric about (I think) courtesans and the fantasies that they inspire and indulge. A brilliant song that is one of my all-time favourites.

6) Nuclear Device (The Wizard of Aus) - The mood lightens somewhat with this thumping and light-hearted fan-favourite. 'Nuclear Device' was a contemptuous dig at the Premier of Queensland, Australia who had set his sights on Aboriginal lands after uranium deposits had been found there. This track was one of two singles released from 'The Raven'.

7) Shah Shah A Go Go - A track inspired by contemporary events. 1979 saw the downfall of the Shah of Iran and his replacement by Ayatollah Khomeini. This song is probably the weakest of the original eleven tracks and was apparently inspired by Nostradamus' Quatrane number 70 that supposedly predicted the Persian switch described above.

8) Don't Bring Harry - A sumptuous, languid and beautiful piano-melody accompanies a mournful lyric about Harry (Heroin). If former front-man Hugh Cornwell's biography is to be believed both he and bassman JJ Burnel were seeing quite a lot of Harry at the time. 'Don't Bring Harry' was also released as part of a four-song EP.

9) Duchess - The most commercial track on the album, 'Duchess' was released as a single a month before the release of the album, reaching No. 12 in the U.K. Singles Chart. It's another irreverent dig, this time at the more dim-witted offspring of the British aristocracy and at their marriage rituals. A staccato drumbeat is accompanied by a busy keyboard and there is also a pleasing amount of post-punk harmonies. The recurring chorus-line is memorable: "And the Rodneys are queuing up... God forbid!" The video that accompanied the single, showing the band in a church and dressed as psychotic choristers, was banned by the BBC on the grounds that it was blasphemous! (for those interested, the offending video is on YouTube.)

10) Meninblack - This is the point where it all gets very weird. Munchkins sing about human flesh being porky meat. They are the Meninblack and they've come to eat us. This song has an epic quality to it and it's crazily attractive and hypnotic. It was the starting point of a journey that would end with the completion of the band's next album, 'The Gospel According to the Meninblack', where weirdness was the order of the day.

11) Genetix - This was the final track on the original release and is another musically-complex song with more layers than it knows what to do with. The classic bass-line is there along with a complicated guitar-riff, and three quarters of the way through the pace changes to introduce some Gregorian-chant-type vocals and bass-guitar virtuosity that fade into a synth ending. Enjoyable.

The remaining tracks were added to the 2001 CD release.

12) Bear Cage - A single released in March 1980, 'Bear Cage' was another superficially-simple oddity that is strangely pleasing. It's another favourite of mine.

13) Fools Rush Out - An instantly forgettable song that was the B-side of the 'Duchess' single.

14) N'Emmenes Pas Harry - In case you haven't guessed, this is the French version of 'Don't Bring Harry' that was recorded for French release (évidemment).

15) Yellowcake UF6 - An unreleased track called (I think) 'Social Secs' was put in a tape machine and played backwards. The result was 'Yellowcake UF6', a track that was the B-side of 'Nuclear Device'. Another oddity that probably seemed like a good idea at the time.

So there it is. I loved (and still love) 'The Raven'; there was no doubt in my mind that it was a work of brilliance. But that, of course, is emotion speaking, and as I was a fan and therefore predisposed to love it then my opinion is partial. Nevertheless, there were few other albums of the time that were as ambitious, brave or complex and these virtues alone took it way above its peers. The Stranglers may have damaged themselves commercially by the direction they took in the late 70s/early 80s but if they hadn't moved that way then we wouldn't have had 'The Raven' to listen to and that would have been a big loss to those who liked their music taken to the edge. Perhaps the best compliment that we can pay in memoriam is that this orgy of black strangeness still sounds fresh in 2008.

(Parts of this review are included in my Ciao review: All Hail The Big Black Bird, posted under the name Volta120.)

Summary: The Raven was (and still is) a superb album, a classic.