Big Audio: Higher Power - 1994
I also had this album, from 1994, which, while also not up to the standard of the group's first four releases, was notable for a typically Jones piece of Madness-esque London nostalgia in Harrow Road and a good one too in the mock-grandiose and at times baroque strains of Slender Loris. It was also a much better offering than the previous two, returning, in many ways, to the Big Audio Dynamite sound I had come to live in the mid-late eighties.
The album has a bit of a muffled, slightly lo-fi sound about it, though. It could do with a remaster, but, that said, it lends a certain gently subtlety to the aural effect that many recording in the late nineties/early 200s lost through being over-loud.
The pop-rock of Modern Stoneage Blues isn't bad either as too is the bouncy, bassy opener Got To Wake Up, which owes a lot to Betty Wright's Shoorah! Shoorah! in its chorus line. The bleepy, staccato sound effects bit in the middle spoils it though, briefly.
Looking For A Song is archetypal Jones - riffy, infectious and lyrically appealing in its slightly self-deprecating manner. Some People has that trademark melodious sound to it that shows the stoned-out, electronic trippiness of the previous two albums had been left behind. Melancholy Maybe puts me in mind of Prince in its attractive poppiness and lyrical intelligence. It's a bit of a BAD unearthed gem.
Over The Rise, with its sampled Eastern influence is laid-back and possessing some of that trippiness I was talking about earlier, but it functions well here, both individually and with regard to the overall flow of the album. Why Is It is a familiar-sounding BAD stomp. It could well have been on Megatop Phoenix with its sound. Moon explores that spaciness that Jones seemed to love once more in its sampling. Its vocal is disarmingly sad-sounding. A similar pathos can be found in Lucan.
Light Up My Life is jaunty and attractive. I love the guitar, bass and percussion on it. The album ends with a Madness meets Tom Robinson cockney ditty in Hope.
This was a bit of an underrated, now ignored album. If I were to make a best of Big Audio Dynamite, career-spanning playlist, I would definitely put the atmospheric Harrow Road in it and Got To Wake Up too.
