Album Review : Prefab Sprout - Let's Change The World With Music
- Written by Penny Broadhurst
Despite the ill-advised spoken intro to the first track (neatly laying waste to all the McAloon non-believers, if you stick around you're one of US or want to be), soon we slip into the beauty of Paddy's voice and suddenly all is well. Yes, there's a lot of stuff about Jesus, but it's foolish to get het up about that sort of thing, otherwise we lose a lot of music, not just this new Prefab Sprout album. Besides, Paddy has "no time for religion" until love and music come along. It's gospel music, it's heavenly, there's nowt wrong with that.
As with the last Kate Bush album, Aerial, it's clear that Prefab Sprout have been living in their own world untouched by modern music production and, as a result, Let's Change The World With Music can sound a bit dated. But when you get those vocals, those lyrics, those shimmering sounds, synth simmer and sparkle, it doesn't matter that Skream hasn't shown up for a remix and RedOne or David Kosten have nothing to do with its conception and that bit there sounds disturbingly like it came straight out of a Fairlight with no ironic filter or re-appropriation to recapture magic from a former era like today's synth acts and copyists, because Paddy never lost it.
'Earth: The Story So Far' makes certain brass sounds acceptable once more and kicks us into a simple narrative that would make you vomit should it come from Cliff Richard, but when McAloon sings "Love me, love me", we can't help but cry. It's real, this, every bit of it.
As with Bush, here is genius and the more that people make outrageous claims that it has dimmed with the years or was never all that, the more we want to defend it. "I love music, she knows how to bring the past into the here and now". All the stuff that made us sashay down the street to 'Hey Manhattan!' or heart-gnaw-gape-pull-sigh to 'When Love Breaks Down' and 'The Sound Of Crying' is present and correct and they evoke nothing so much as themselves, the mighty Prefab Sprout. And it does things to us, this album, it sodding well does. Every chord and half whisper gets us, right there.
"Music is a princess/I'm just a boy in raaaaaaaags" over a tinkling piano should be sentimental and awful, but it's sincere and wonderful because here it is in the hands of an open hearted master. Rules and cynicism are nonsense. Awe, awe, awe is what we feel for music too. That's why we do this and we shouldn't forget. This is a record in love with music, culled from Paddy McAloon's room of tapes and notebooks, from years and years of this stuff. And you know what? It sounds bloody great and it makes us feel even more. "Here comes the last of the great romantics/Faithful and true, believing in you regardless of the things you do…Why are you scared to leave your cage?"