^ TES is perfect arena rap, it's the type of album you can only make when you've got that pressure of being the most famous person in the world on your shoulders. I find that the rest of his stuff is either too goofy or unnecessarily edgy. Hypocritical, I know.
No, this is not a scrapped archival release under a David Bowie pseudonym that bubbled to the surface, it's a completely different person...kinda. The last album I listened to, Jobriath, was touted as the American answer to Bowie. That was the early 70s, in the Glam era, Bowie had not yet become the Thin White Duke; or went through personal metamorphosis in Berlin with Brian Eno.
Zaine Griff had been moving from place to place in the London music and art scene, meeting future stars like Kate Bush and the drummer from Ultravox, and composer Hans Zimmer. In 1979, his debut solo album was produced by Tony Visconti, who had just previously finished up the Berlin trilogy with Bowie. Bowie sat in on the recording of some of this album, when first introduced to Zaine by Tony, David was stupefied, he found the resemblance uncanny.
The sound is somewhere between
Lodger and
Scary Monsters, distinctly early 80s British New Wave, in the thick of the New Romantic era of Roxy Music and ABC. Just a bunch of well crafted pop songs, but the title track stands above all and should be much more well known than it is.
