The Affectionate Punch [Extra tracks, Original recording remastered]

What was it about Scottish bands in the 80's? Being Scottish and living with this music at the time, there was something angular, off-centre and unique about what the Cocteau Twins, Win, Josef K, Simple Minds and The Associates were doing. Even now albums such as "The Affectionate Punch", "Fourth Drawer Down" and "Sulk" sound so alien to what pop music should sound like. That's what keeps it sounding fresh and invigorating. For the duo of Mackenzie and Rankine, there were no limits, no barriers, no conforming to standard precepts of how pop music should sound.

This is a great package. The remastered sound is excellent, clear and crisp. The booklet has full credits, lyrics, a good essay and some nice archival photographs. The extra tracks are worth a listen too.

This is such a welcome release indeed. A superb debut album and a prime example from a time when pop music was quirky, bold, original and to be honest interesting!

The album has dated well, and though neither as electronic-experimental as 'Fourth Drawer Down' or as opaque-otherworldly as 'Sulk', it completes the recordings of Mackenzie/Rankine-Associates & contextualises what came after. The band later dismissed it as a demo & wrote it off as dark - but I think it's fine and certainly holds its own against such peers albums as 'Empires & Dance', 'Gentlemen Take Polaroids','Technodelic', 'Seventeen Seconds', 'Computerworld', 'The Only Fun in Town' & 'The Correct Use of Soap.' It's quite Bowie - though balances his influence with Mackenzie & Rankine's own original outlook - I'd say it was the album Bowie-fans would wish he'd made after "Heroes."

'The Affectionate Punch' was their sole-release on Fiction, home to The Cure for many years - further connections with that band are clear here when the producers includ Fiction-head/ex-Cure-manager Chris Parry & Mike Hedges - who would produce 'Seventeen Seconds', 'Faith' & 'Sulk' (amongst others). Mackenzie & Rankine also produce- the former sings, while the latter plays all the instruments bar the drums (played by Nigel Glocker). Cure-fans will note the presence of Robert Smith on backing-vocals - the place where Smith got his trademark howl from?

The lyrics are beginning to become as oblique as later joys like 'Breakfast' & 'Skipping' - the sinister "His jawline's not perfect, but that can be altered" from 'Transport to Central' (the missing link between 'Night & Fog' & 'Station to Station'?), or the surreal "If I threw myself from the ninth storey- would I levitate back to three?" from 'Would I...Bounce Back' being prime examples. With a mind on Mackenzie's tragic sucide, you retroactively look again at the lyrics- "I caught me looking at myself/Now my voice deep with age/Talks in tongues of younger days" ('Logan Time'), or "Don't be sure of days in advance/They might never come..." ('Amused as Always'). The slightly odd lyrics I think predict something recent like Interpol - who have songs like 'Leif Erikson' & 'Roland' that drift between nonsense & profound via oblique (I'd love to hear Interpol cover 'Logan Time'). Musically, you are reminded of Berlin-Bowie, 'Propaganda'-Sparks & Foxx-era Ultravox! Then again, its influence can be detected in early records by U2 (admitted by Bono in the introduction to 'The Glamour Chase' book), and its sound could be argued to be borrowed/diluted by Duran Duran & Spandau Ballet for their respective debuts. 'The Affectionate Punch' is a prime example of the New Romantic sound...

It's all great - from the playful-pop of 'A' (as assured as prime-pop Prince), to the gorgeous 'A Matter of Gender' & the sleazy 'Even Dogs in the Wild' - which achieves in one-song what Brett Anderson has in a career. The highpoint, or rather lowpoint comes early - the latter triad of the original side one : 'Logan Time', 'Paper House' & 'Transport to Central.' 'Logan Time' nods to the early death sci-fi of the film 'Logan's Run' and is hypnotic stuff; while 'Paper House' displays a sound not far from Siouxsie & the Banshees. 'Transport to Central' remains dark, quasi-Nietzchean stuff - leading towards that 'White Car in Germany' the following year...

'The Affectionate Punch' is a welcome reissue, especially in this version which replaces the 1997-reissue of the 1982 remixed/remodelled version (which might have been issued with this for completist sake!). This pretty much completes the Associates-Mackenzie back-catalogue with the albums reissued and recent compilations like 'Auchtermatic', 'Singles' & 'Transmission Impossible' - though am sure I read somewhere that there are several albums worth of songs recorded with Yello's Boris Blank, so perhaps not? An obligatory purchase - though perhaps 'Kites' should have been a bonus-track too?

'The Affectionate Punch' would later be dismissed by the band, who went onto the more experimental singles collected on 'Fourth Drawer Down' & the masterpiece-longplayer 'Sulk', before the band split and Mackenzie carried on alone. 'The Affectionate Punch' is one of those albums which very much continues the avenues explored on Bowie's late 1970s classics 'Station to Station', 'Low' & "Heroes" - obviously influenced by the thin white one, as well as Mackenzie's favourites Siouxsie & the Banshees. It would also influence, from the vocal-inflections that turned up on later Cure-records, to the guitar sound on 'Paper House' - U2 have cited early Associates records as amongst those that influenced them (see also Gang of Four, Joy Division). 'The Affectionate Punch' is one to file alongside such albums of the era as 'Seventeen Seconds', 'Empires & Dance', 'Journeys to Glory', 'Ju-Ju', 'Scary Monsters', 'The Correct Use of Soap', 'Travelogue', 'A/Z', 'Vienna' etc and is a key example of the so-called New Wave. It also displays Mackenzie & Rankine's pop-sensibility, based around the former's wild vocal style, and the latter's eclectic instrumentation.

The album does pale against Mackenzie & Rankine's avant-pop peak with Mike Hedges over the following years - and perhaps the 1982 remixed version could have also been included for completist sake? The lyrics are becoming odd, though nothing up there with 'Nude Spoons' or 'Skipping' yet, though there are messages oblique, "If I threw myself from the ninth storey - would I levitate back to three?" & "I don't know whether to over or under estimate you" - Mackenzie's wordplay becoming significant. There's also the playful 'A', adventerous pop that only AR Kane and peak-Prince have been close to (a pop chart based around the alphabet) & the lusty 'Even Dogs in the Wild'- which pretty much encapsulates Suede's career into one song!

There are lyrics that could hint at the despair and tragedy later - "Don't be sure of days in advance" ('Amused as Always')& "I caught me looking at myself/Now my voice deep with age/Talks in tongues of younger days" ('Logan Time') - though the bleak stuff was the order of the day at the time, remember. The darker songs here are the most memorable, paving the way towards joys like 'White Car in Germany', 'No' & 'Breakfast'- 'Deeply Concerned' is as strong as anything on "Heroes" , while the title track is one of those songs I like to imagine on a Mackenzie-covers album recorded by David Bowie...

The darkest section remains the first-side, following the title track and the desperate-rush of 'Amused as Always' there is the triad of 'Logan Time', 'Paper House' & 'Transport to Central.' 'Logan Time' is sci-fi inflected, moving towards the strangeness of 'Q Quarters', the theme relating to 'Logan's Run' - delivered in Mackenzie's wonderful vocals to Rankine's chiming guitars. Even better is the wild 'Paper House', which delivers wilder guitars & vocals over a Bowie-Eno-Visconti style electronica, the conclusion offers the refrain "There's a garden at the bottom" - the same garden as the later 'No'? 'Transport to Central' is fantastic stuff, related to the Nietzchean vibe apparent on 1981's single 'White Car in Germany'- sinister, quasi-fascist lyrics common to the time and found also in releases by Spandau Ballet & Throbbing Gristle: "Transport to central/We need more like him...His jawline's not perfect/But that can be altered/We've waited so long/For this one, to arrive..."

'The Affectionate Punch' demonstrates that pop can go some pretty adventerous places if people feel like it, and charts a story of an alternative type of pop practiced in the 1980s from a myriad of acts including Japan-Soft Cell-AR Kane-Scritti Politti-BEF-Heaven17-The Human League-Simple Minds-The Style Council-XTC-The Chills-New Order-Cabaret Voltaire-The The-Wire & masses more. 'The Affectionate Punch' is probably the album many wished Bowie would have made instead of the so-so 'Lodger', and would provide the ideal introduction to The/Associates prior to the xeno-pop of Situation Two and 'Sulk'....