Spies, Secrets and Communiques

Dire Straits : Lady Writer

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On June 15, 1979 Dire Straits released Communique, the follow-up to their self-titled debut album. Not a huge departure from its predecessor, the album sold well as critics were leaping off the Dire Straits train . Robert Christgau noted this in his B- review: 

Boy, people are getting bored with these guys fast--if they don't watch out they're gonna last about as long as Looking Glass or the Lemon Pipers. Just another case of "substance" as novelty, I guess--doesn't sound bad, but they'd better up those beats-per-minute.

Robert Palmer : Bad Case of Loving You

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Robert Palmer scored a Top 20 hit album thanks to his cover of Moon Martin's "Bad Case of Loving You". It's all a pretty straight-forward rock, unsatisfying.  Rolling Stone's Stephen Holden wrote 

"Academically, everything works. Technically, Secrets is impeccable, but it's too dispassionate to achieve the ominous resonance Palmer wants. "

Then on the final two tracks, "What's It Take?" and "Remember to Remember", Palmer double tracks his vocals in way that's actually very cool. I wonder if this is what attracted  Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads. They would produce his next album, Clues. Palmer would even get to play percussion on Remain in Light.

Carly Simon : Vengeance

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Carly Simon released Spy, her last album for Elektra. The single "Vengeance" peaked at U.S.#54 but she won a Grammy for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female for the song. In a review for Rolling Stone, Debra Rae Cohen wrote:

Here, Simon’s rough, bold voice — powerful and affecting as ever — seizes center stage with husky promise and, like a dormitory storyteller after lights out, threatens revelations. But even discounting the mediating layers of studio polish, she winds up sounding strangely distanced from her material. 

Simon would spend the early part of the 80's recording harder rocking songs .