Teardrop Explodes : Poppies In The Field
I think we're very poppy. To me pop is something you hum. What I'm trying to do is strike a balance between triteness and greatness.
-Julian Cope
On October 10, 1980 Teardrop Explodes finally released their long-awaited debut album Kilimanjaro. The Liverpool band emerged from the same neo-psychedelic sound that gave us Echo and the Bunnymen and Wah!Heat and had already released four of the songs on the album as singles "Sleeping Gas", "Bouncing Babies", "Treason", a UK Indie #3 hit and the UK#47 "When I Dream".
The deep cuts offer more rewards. "Poppies In The Field" even has backwards guitar sounds, an incessant Krautrock bass line and the line "I can't explain at all/ I can't explain what I feel" which seems to sum up how I feel writing about this influential album which I often plucked from the shelves at my college radio station. When you wanted your 80's college radio show to sound like an 80's college radio show Kilimanjaro was a great way to do that. And it flowed so well out of 60's psychedelia like Love, The Doors and later Byrds.
Robert Christgau gave the album a grade of B, writing
If Bunnyman Ian McCulloch favors the schlock mysterioso Jim Morrison, Droplet Julian Cope prefers the schlock heartthrob, complete with romantic authoritarianism ("Well I don't think this is real/To criticize our love" is prime hippie bullshit, no?), "Touch Me" horns, and AM potential. No, really, "Sleeping Gas" was once a very poppy indie single, and some of this stuff would probably sound pretty neat on the, er, radio is what we used to call it I guess. But why anyone who didn't acquire an addiction that way would prefer this to Blondie or the Box Tops is beyond me. I mean, Cope is a little smarter than Jay Black or Gary Lewis, but that just makes him harder to take.
The album spent 35 weeks on the UK charts and that's despite a muddy mix and one of the least inspired album covers of all time. Anyone paying attention to the lyrics ("The parachute's in the bag/ I'm throwing it over to you") would guess Julian Cope wasn't your typical pop star frontman. In the early 80's U2 and Duran Duran may have considered the Teardrops rivals, but Cope walked out of recording sessions for what would have been the third album to pursue a fascinating, often psychedelic drug induced musical career that only sometimes bounced back into the pop world.
Great album and great that Julian is still going strong. I was lucky enough to see him last year, and he's as mad and magnificent as ever.
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