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!
