THE STRANGLERS - LA FOLIE @ 40

 

Celebrating its 40th anniversary today is the sixth studio album by The Stranglers, La Folie, which was released on November 9th, 1981. Directly translated as “madness”, the French title was elaborated on by the band as a reference to the madness of romance and love, a theme which is carried through the album’s lyrical content.

At the time this album came along, The Stranglers’ career trajectory was decidedly waning, commercially. Their previous album, The Gospel According to the Meninblack, had not performed as well as their earlier albums, which had positioned them as one of the most commercially successful UK bands to come from the “punk” movement of the late ’70s. To try to boost their appeal, their record label recruited acclaimed producer Tony Visconti to help craft each song on the album with an ear towards it potentially being a single. The effort, initially, seemed to be in vain as the first single from the album failed to make any impact and album sales dragged as a result. Then came the second single, Golden Brown, which ignited on the airwaves and ended up propelling the album into the upper reaches of the charts and steadily climbing sales. Despite its controversial musings on the pleasures of heroine, It ended up putting the band back on the map as far as being hit makers and was one of the labels biggest selling singles for several years.

The album, as a whole, represents some of the most polished and intricate music the group had produced to that point. Personally, it’s one of my favorite Stranglers albums along with The Raven. It has a progressive edge to it while maintaining a professional sheen to the production and the songwriting hooks are insistent and unforgettable. It also has a sophistication that showed off the group’s true prowess as musicians while never quite betraying the more cynical, dark humored undercurrent that had always been at their core. The theme may have been the emotional turmoil of romance, but the intellectualism of the lyrics retains a constant counterpoint. It’s almost a baroque sense of ornateness in some areas, especially with things like the harpsichord on Golden Brown, courtesy of the late, great Dave Greenfield. It’s a richly layered and textured album of complex, multidimensional themes delivered with precision and panache!