Dance (Gary Numan album)

Dance
Studio album by Gary Numan
Released 4 September 1981
Recorded June–July 1981
Studio Rock City Studios, Shepperton
Genre Experimental music, new wave, ambient, jazz fusion, synthpop
Length 57:01
Label Beggars Banquet
Producer Gary Numan
Gary Numan chronology
Telekon
(1980)		 Dance
(1981		 I, Assassin
(1982)
Singles from Dance (Gary Numan album)
  1. "She's Got Claws"
    Released: 29 August 1981
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic [1]
Release Magazine[2]
Smash Hits[3]

Dance is the fifth studio album, and third under his own name, by the British musician Gary Numan, released in 1981. Featuring the Top 10 single "She's Got Claws", the album reached #3 on the UK charts.

Overview

With synth pop music in the mainstream by 1981, Numan made a conscious effort to craft a more sombre, personal and musically experimental album, in a jazzier vein than its predecessors.

The album's sound constitutes a significant change in style from the heavy analogue synth arrangements of Numan's earlier hit releases. Side One of the album consists of four long, sparse, slow-tempo minimalist songs, with the rhythm tracks based largely around muted drum machine patterns. The style is not dissimilar to some of the more ambient work by Brian Eno, particularly his solo album Another Green World and collaborations with David Bowie on Low and "Heroes", and tracks by the band Japan such as '"The Tenant" and "Despair". Side Two of the album contains shorter, more conventional songs. One of these, "Moral", adapted the tune from Numan's 1979 song "Metal", changing its lyrics into an attack on the New Romantic movement.[4]

Numan's commercial success by this period enabled him to enlist several guest musicians to perform on the album, including guitarist Rob Dean and (fretless) bassist/saxophonist Mick Karn of Japan, drummer Roger Taylor of Queen, keyboardist Roger Mason of Australian band Models, and Canadian alternative musician Nash the Slash (who had performed live with Numan in 1980 and 1981).

Lyrically, the songs deal largely with tragic sexual relationships, examined in a manner similar to the often bleak and alienating relationships between people and technology that informed earlier songs such as "Down in the Park" and "Are 'Friends' Electric?". The opening track "Slowcar to China" is a nine-minute opus about a prostitute. "Night Talk" is about a man dealing with a lover who is a drug addict (co-written with close friend and former bass-player, Paul Gardiner, himself a heroin addict). "Cry the Clock Said" is a nearly ten-minute ballad about a breakup. The salsa-flavoured "She's Got Claws" is about a predatory woman, written as an embittered response to an ex-girlfriend who sold the story of their relationship to the tabloids. The melancholic "Stories" describes an accidental café reunion between a woman and her son by a failed relationship.

Numan also wrote and recorded a song titled "Dance", but it was ultimately not included on the original album and was only released years later as a CD bonus track.

Reception

Reaction to the album was mixed, some critics applauding what they saw as a less commercial career move and others viewing the change of pace with cynicism. A few years after Dance's release Numan conceded, "if I was supposed to be a pop star doing music for the masses, it probably wasn't the right thing to do", but he praised the standard of playing on it.[5] "She's Got Claws" was the album's sole single release, making number 6 in the UK charts, whilst the album itself peaked at number 3. It was Numan's first album to miss the number 1 spot since Tubeway Army's debut album in 1978, dropping out of the charts after 8 weeks.

Legacy

Numan very rarely performs any music from the album in concert. However live recordings and visual footage of "She's Got Claws", "Cry the Clock Said" and "Moral" ("Metal") appear on Numan's video/DVD Micromusic and album Living Ornaments '81, taken when they were previewed prior to the release of Dance at his Wembley 'farewell' concerts in April 1981. An early live recording of "Stories" also came to light in 2005 when Beggars Banquet released the expanded Living Ornaments '80 album on CD. Numan performed "Crash" and "Boys Like Me" during club dates in the US in 1982 but they have not been officially released, while "Night Talk" was performed live in 2004 to mark the 20th anniversary of Paul Gardiner's death, Numan's longtime bassist and co-writer of the track.

On his website on 30 March 2010, Numan mentioned that "Crash" was one of the songs rehearsed for his set at the Manchester and London "Back to the Phuture" shows.

Track listing

All tracks written by Gary Numan, except "Night Talk" and "Stormtrooper in Drag", co-written with Paul Gardiner. 

No. Title Length
1. "Slowcar to China"   9:05
2. "Night Talk"   4:26
3. "A Subway Called 'You'"   4:38
4. "Cry, the Clock Said"   9:56
5. "She's Got Claws"   4:58
6. "Crash"   3:39
7. "Boys Like Me"   4:16
8. "Stories"   3:11
9. "My Brother's Time"   4:38
10. "You Are, You Are"   4:03
11. "Moral"   4:33

Musicians

Notes

  1. ↑ Bush, John. Dance at AllMusic. Retrieved 7 July 2011.
  2. ↑ Huss, Mattias (24 November 1999). "Gary Numan: Dance - Release On Line review". Release Magazine. Retrieved 7 July 2011.
  3. ↑ "Black, Johnny (17 September 1981). "Album Reviews (Gary Numan - "Dance")". Smash Hits. Vol. 3 no. 19. EMAP Metro. p. 29.
  4. ↑ Lyrics: "These New Romantics are oh so boring, I could swear I've been there once or twice before, I should grow wings and just forget the club, You know the legends never wanted to be me."
  5. ↑ Stephen Webbon & Gary Numan (1985). "Complete Gary Numan UK Discography". Record Collector (December 1985, No. 76): p.16

References

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