The Sound : I Can't Help Myself
In the first week of November 1980 The Sound released Jeopardy, their critically-acclaimed debut album on the Korova label. Perhaps because of the band's generic "new wave" name, I missed out on all things Sound. I rank Jeopardy as my best musical discovery from 1980. This is as energetic as post-punk gets, but it came at an awful price for songwriter Adrian Borland, who put his music ahead of his own mental health. On "I Can't Help Myself" he sings "Left alone I'm with the one I fear".
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| The Sound. Adrian Borland is third from left. |
I'll let the critics of 1980 have their say. Dave McCullough of Sounds gave the album a five star review, writing :
There's a richness and depth here that places Jeopardy alongside Boy (U2) as early eighties tonics for ailing mainstream rock, that gives the almost bankrupt era the spirit and sheer modernity of the best moderns. Its form is a practically incredible, but consistently effective synthesis of Teardrop-meet-Bunnymen ( and survives the strain). The Sound are on to a winner...an inconspicuous but real missing-link between the Modernist Jam and the vibrantly Post Mod Joy Division.
Steve Sutherland of Melody Maker also gave the album the magazine's highest possible rating. He wrote:
"Jeopardy is one of those records that makes me want to throw all the windows open, crank it up to full volume and blast it out to the world. It clears my head of boredom, strips away the gloom and single-handedly restores my belief in the power of pop to make people stop, think and question. [...] Jeopardy has got more spirit, more soul and more downright honesty about it than any other record I've heard this year".
The album did not sell in big numbers. Adrian Borland threw himself in front of a train in 1999, dying before the reputation of Jeopardy began building to the point where it is now ranked among the best 20 albums of 1980 by RateYourMusic, ahead of those by The Cure, Bunnymen, and Teardrop Explodes.
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